ahci and sata ports

[no2censorship]

i have an a79a-s; i have my hdd and dvd drive connected to 2 of the 4 sata ports on the edge; vista 64 is the o/s. would i run into problems if i just switched to ahci from native in the bios, or do you think it would be ok?


also, my other question:

are the 2 sata ports located not on the edge of the board any different from the ones on the edge with my board?

for example, do they use a different controller?

i'd really appreciate any help here.

i know that there was a review of it here, so maybe the reviewer could help me?

[Old Hippie]

would i run into problems if i just switched to ahci from native in the bios,

Yep, your machine probably won't boot. Those drivers need to be installed with the OS, or as a repair install. Don't bother with it.

are the 2 sata ports located not on the edge of the board any different from the ones on the edge with my board?

All 6 on the board the same, but there's one on your rear I/O that's an eSATA port on a different controller.

[HydroBudz]

You would need to set a registry entry in Vista prior to rebooting and changing your BIOS settings, or like Hippie said, you won't be able to boot into Windows. Read this MSKB artice:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

FWIW, unless you plan on hot-swapping your drives there is no point in using AHCI.