AHCI Mode

[Disturbedguy]

Hi guys,

I will be rebuilding my rig next weekend and want to enable AHCI.

In regards to drivers, do I get them from the Motherboard Manufacturer or the drive manufacturer?

Installing them seems pretty straight forward and I know I will have no problems with that side of things.

Thanks

[aidanjt]

AHCI is a completely standardised protocol. Windows Vista and up already has a generic Microsoft AHCI driver out of the box. For Windows XP, grab Intel's F6 floppy drivers from their website. If you don't have a floppy drive there's plenty of methods for integrating drivers into windows install discs, guides and tools online etc..

[spoon_]

I would steer away from the generic drive included with Windows. Get it downloaded from manufacturer of your motherboard site.

For Windows XP nlite works quite well (if you don't have USB floppy drive that is!)

[Disturbedguy]

Cheers ill grab it from the manufacturers website and stick it on a USB pen drive

[Pob255]

On XP if you have two separate sata controllers on your motherboard then it's actually quite easy to swap over to AHCI mode after installing xp (much harder to do if you only have a single sata controller, it's best to nlite then.)

As to not using the generic drive included with Windows, it shouldn't be an issue to use it in the initial install then swap over to the correct AHCI driver after.

nLite'ing is great to make custom installs but can be a lot of hassle if you only have one pc