SATA question

[Fawlty]

Hi; I'm going to be reloading winxp to a sata drive shortly and have a few questions.
Right now I'm running my drives in bios ata mode on my p-35-ds3r because I didn't realize the sata drivers needed installing when loading xp.
Will I notice much of a HD speed increase if I reload xp with the sata drivers installed over ata mode?

Also I don't want to run raid, but do want any benefits of sata.When I'm loading xp and have the floppy with the drives , do I select the "AHCI" controller option?

Thanks

[Fawlty]

Re: SATA question

Just doing a little research, looks like AHCI is for hot swapping which I don't need, but the big question is there any HD speed difference running in ide mode.

[VorLonUK]

Re: SATA question

Hi; I'm going to be reloading winxp to a sata drive shortly and have a few questions.
Right now I'm running my drives in bios ata mode on my p-35-ds3r because I didn't realize the sata drivers needed installing when loading xp.
Will I notice much of a HD speed increase if I reload xp with the sata drivers installed over ata mode?

Also I don't want to run raid, but do want any benefits of sata.When I'm loading xp and have the floppy with the drives , do I select the "AHCI" controller option?

Thanks

I think your board is like mine with the ICH9r chip?

You don't need any extra drivers for XP to run SATA Hard drives (in ide native or legacy mode). However unlike Vista if you want to run AHCI and/or Raid you do need to load the Intel matrix storage driver via the F6 method during the windows install.

So yes you would select native support and AHCI in the bios. You'll note an additional POST screen after the main bios has loaded, which will indicate that it's looking for your sata drives.

F6 method notes:-

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/17059/eng/readme.txt

5.3 Pre-Installation Using the F6 Method.

Note: The Steps 1 and 2 can be skipped if you use the F6 Floppy
disk utility provided by Intel. These methods
are applicable to systems configured for RAID or
AHCI mode.

</pre>

For XP home 32bit:-

[VorLonUK]

Re: SATA question

Just doing a little research, looks like AHCI is for hot swapping which I don't need, but the big question is there any HD speed difference running in ide mode.

I've benchmarked both in Vista 64 as NCQ is supported too with my drives and the Matrix software.

However, general transfer speeds I found to be about the same, ie Eide mode vs AHCI mode.
The only big difference I found was the Burst rate was increased by about 30%. Generally that means the HardDrive cache to hard drive Controller speed.

I have had problems with the Matrix software in windows vista64 with programs such as 3Dmark Vantage, but there latest release actually cures that, so I'll probably stick with AHCI.

But all in all, i would say that the performance enhancements with AHCI don't make up for some of the problems there have been. There seem to be very few problems when Sata drives are in EIDE Native mode.

It's really - take your pick!

[Fawlty]

Re: SATA question

Thanks VorLonUK;
Yup this board does have the ICH9r chip.

In Bios/Power Management Setup I have

Onboard SATA/IDE Mode set to IDE which configures the SATA controler to PATA mode.
Just wanted to make sure I wasn't taking a loss in speed.

Cheers
Fawlty