Originally posted by: phile
Originally posted by: Butterbean
I have computer running on this mobo using one SATA drive that was set up using EIDE in bios (Media Center Edition OS). Is there any advantage to re installing with the HD configured for AHCI if there will be no RAID?
On original install I pressed F6 for 2 days with no effect. It turned out the new floppy drive wasn't working (it is now). I finally said "screw it" and set it up as EIDE and the OS went in fine.
Concerning the eSATA port on the board. Does the BIOS need to be AHCI for that to work? I read that AHCI enabled "portability" and wasn't quite sure what that meant.
Are the drivers on the ASUS CD still the ones to use after F6 prompt? It's a bit confusing as new SATA person to know what to install because many people refer to "SATA" drivers when ASUS disk refers only to RAID drivers on its disk - namely the ICH7R and the JMicron. Do both of these need to be installed at F6 prompt? I understand thats a pretty basic question but the abundance of information concerning this step is considerable. Some say "disable" the Micron..don't use ASUS disk go right to Intel etc etc.
Thanks for any info. I'll leap ahead into things anyway since it looks like this thread is getting quieter (which may be a good sign lol)
Ok, here's how this board works SATA drives.
As you are likely aware, there are two SATA controllers on this board: the native ICH7R SATA controller and the JMicron SATA controller. No driver is required for either if you're running SATA in the default
Standard IDE mode. However, if you want certain SATA features like hot-plugging and NCQ to work, you need to run SATA drives in
AHCI mode.
In order to run the drives in
AHCI mode on the ICH7R controller, you need to preload the Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver (makedisk application for the latest version can be found on Intel's site). This disk will contain drivers for both the ICH8R and ICH7R chipsets, so take your time and select the proper driver. It will be the
SATA, AHCI for ICH7R (desktop).
As for the e-SATA port, that is managed by the JMicron controller. You will definitely need to set the JMicron controller to run SATA drives in
AHCI mode, since e-SATA without hot-plugging is rather impractical. I haven't tried this, myself, but you could probably achieve this by going into the BIOS and configuring the JMicron controller accordingly, and then loading the JMicron drivers within Windows.
All of the above is based on the assumption that your BOOT drive is connected to SATA1, on the ICH7R controller.
Hopefully, this fully addresses your issue.
-phil