AHCI & Floppy F6 load questions-Help!

[sco0001]

Last several hours I was looking for some answers. I have found a lot of information, but a few questions remained unanswered. So I hope that I will get some answers. My motherboard is Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R rev.2, expect to install OS on the Corsair Nova series SSD and secondary HD is WD Caviar 1TB SATA3 (6GB/s).

• This may be a silly question, but I am a little confused. For AHCI to work with XP, I know that I have to install driver with floppy/F6 at XP setup, but on the BIOS, before I install XP with driver, should I set the ‘ICH SATA Controller Mode’ to IDE or AHCI? I have been trying to install driver after setting the controller at AHCI and it does not work. Setup starts, load drivers from floppy, and then blue screen.
• On the BIOS, there are at least 3 locations where I can set to IDE/AHCI or RAID. Other than the one mentioned above for the IHC10R, there is (a) eSATA Ctrl Mode (JMicron JMB362 Chip, eSATA Connectors), (b) GSATA 6_7/IDE Ctrl Mode (Marvell 9128 Chip, GSATA3_6/7 Connectors) with options IDE or AHCI and (c) GSATA 8_9/IDE Ctrl Mode (GIGABYTE SATA2 Chip, IDE and GSATA2_8/9 Connectors). Given that I am not planning to setup and use RAID, which of these I should set to AHCI in BIOS and install driver at XP installation time? And should I set it in the BIOS first or after installing driver and XP?
• Given that my OS drive will be SSD, thus the primary drive, on which port should I connect this drive, or does it matter?

I really appreciate your help.

 

[mfenn]

You can set all 3 controllers to AHCI if you like, but the ICH10 must be set to AHCI if you plan to install in AHCI mode. Make sure that the SSD is plugged into one of the ICH10 ports.

As for the blue screen, make sure that you are using the correct driver. That or switch to a modern OS.

 

[sco0001]

As for the blue screen, make sure that you are using the correct driver. That or switch to a modern OS.

Modern OS meaning Windows 7? and what about disabling/enabling ‘SATA Port0-3 Native Mode’ option in the BIOS? Is it more Native mode friendly or Legacy?

As far as driver, they are the latest, from the Gigabyte download site.

I read somewhere that when doing F6 to load the drivers from floppy at XP setup time, do not take out the floppy as it needs to re-load drivers after restart, but if I have 3 floppies to load drivers for IH10R, GSATA2 and Marvell 91xx GSATA – how does it work? I was getting message like mv91xx.sys file could not be loaded or found for Marvell 91xx drivers and setup was terminating. I think it loads in the memory or virtual location first, then when it times to work with the HD (in this case SSD) the setup does not find it when it’s set to AHCI as opposed to IDE in BIOS.

 

[heyheybooboo]

I'll guess that mfenn is referring to the degradation of your SSD because of the limitations of the XP OS (no TRIM, garbage collection, etc.).

If you get it going whatever you do, don't defrag the SSD in XP. And it's my understanding that turning off the indexing services will help lengthen the lifespan of the SSD in XP.




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[mfenn]

I'll guess that mfenn is referring to the degradation of your SSD because of the limitations of the XP OS (no TRIM, garbage collection, etc.).
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You got it. :thumbsup:

To the OP, if you're having problems with the Marvell controller's drivers, just disable it while you set up the machine. You can install the drivers normally once in Windows. I would leave the SATA ports in "native mode".

Also, don't bother using the Caviar Black on the SATA 6Gb/s ports. The drive is nowhere near fast enough to actually take advantage of SATA 6Gb/s speeds.

 

[sco0001]

You got it. :thumbsup:

To the OP, if you're having problems with the Marvell controller's drivers, just disable it while you set up the machine. You can install the drivers normally once in Windows. I would leave the SATA ports in "native mode".

Also, don't bother using the Caviar Black on the SATA 6Gb/s ports. The drive is nowhere near fast enough to actually take advantage of SATA 6Gb/s speeds.

I've been reading all about TRIM/NAND etc. retaled to SSD yesterday and that SSD is perfect for Win7. I am not worried about wear & tear, after all even 10,000 times (is it the right number?) read/write is more than life tiem, and as for speed: what I've already encountered is lightning faster than a mechanical drive. Even with the slowest SSD, I think I'll be happy.

My whole objective here is to make it work with AHCI, coz the mobo manual doesn't give any clue. I'd think architectures spend so much time and money designing a technology and mobo companies manufactures mobos with those technologies find a little time to document and publich them in their manuals, but it's dissapointingly blank!

I am going to install driver and Win XP wth setting all to IDE in the BIOS, then try to change back to AHCI. I've also known that you could change the setting through registry modification - I just don't want to go that rounte unless I asbolutely have to.

Thanks for your responses.

 

[crucibelle]

I am going to install driver and Win XP wth setting all to IDE in the BIOS, then try to change back to AHCI. I've also known that you could change the setting through registry modification - I just don't want to go that rounte unless I asbolutely have to.

Thanks for your responses.

I'm not totally sure about this, but I've been doing some reading about SSD's and I've read that if you try to change back to AHCI after the Windows install (without registry editing) you'll get BSOD's. Hope everything works out well for you, though!

 

[sco0001]

Well, all attempts have failed so far.

One last thing I was trying to do is connect the SSD to the GSATA 2 port and set on the BIOS to RAID. It shows up nice as a RAID drive on the screen at startup. Then I start the XP setup process with F6. I put the GSATA RAID driver on a floppy, it seemed to have copied for the time being (without this driver loaded, the SSD drive doesn't show up as one of the partisions for windows to install), but as I select the SSD drive as install partition and setup proceeds, it fails with loading 'Jraid.sys' file and some other *.ini files (basically all 4 files in the floppy). I through my floppy drive/cable/disk were bad. Literally, I swapped all of these items and same results. Then I googled and found that others have similar problem.

Therefore I kinda came to a conclussion that it's not the correct version. The SSD RAID version is not matching with the motherboard supplied (Gigabyte) driver version. Now let me go research on that. Hopefully I'll find the correct version somewhere and it will work.

Does anyone knows if Corsair website could have drivers? I tried on their website without any luck. Maybe I need to look somewhere else.

I am writing all these here hopefully someone else will be benifited. As I tried looking for these answers and did not find many answers. I am not a pro system builder. Last one I built was over 5 years ago and everything has changed since.

So any help I get is greatly apreciated!

 

[mfenn]

The problem is not with the drive, so any firmware updates that you find on Corsair's website wouldn't help.

One thing that you might want to try is using nLite to slipstream all of the drivers onto a custom XP disc. This will bypass the whole floppy issue altogether. (Though things should "just work" in IDE mode.)

 

[Auric]

Get the tool DriverInjection and place it together with devcon and the Intel RST drivers on a floppy or USB drive. Boot from a pre-installed Windows disc (there are many pre-made ones available such as Hiren's or you can make your own with BartPE Builder or UBCD4Win). Run DriverInjection and point to your own Windows installation.

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=22523&st=40

 

[vailr]

There's a beta bios FC1 for the "Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R rev.2":
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/gigabyte/ga-x58a-ud3r.htm
An easy method for slipstreaming updated drivers into a newly-made XP install disc:
http://driverpacks.net/

 

[sco0001]

Thanks mfenn, Auric and vailr for suggesting tools. I am aware of these tools, especially BartPE and UBCD, just never played with them.

Anyway, I finally gave up on driver loading at XP setup time, because even w/o driver load attempts were failing. So finally I updated the BIOS firmware, I just noticed the default version was FA (or version 1) and FB was available, so I updated and it worked with IDE set but driver load failed for ACHI. It must be the board itself, and if so, I hope they are working on to fix it.

For now, I will just set it to IDE and run as is.

Anyway, I am interested in learing about the injection and build my own setup DVD/CD.

 

[RaiderJ]

I fiddled for awhile trying to get AHCI working for a spindle HDD in Windows XP.... gave up and just went with IDE. I didn't need hotswap or NCQ, and figured the practical performance difference would be negligible.

 

[mfenn]

I fiddled for awhile trying to get AHCI working for a spindle HDD in Windows XP.... gave up and just went with IDE. I didn't need hotswap or NCQ, and figured the practical performance difference would be negligible.

:thumbsup: Don't try to bootstrap modern tech onto an old OS.