Any tips for mb swap on Win7?

U

Udo

Limp Gawd
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Nov 17, 2009
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I have some new hardware arriving this week (motherboard, cpu, ram) and would like to swap out the hardware without having to reinstall Win7 if possible. Apart from uninstalling video drivers first is there anything else I should do so the swap goes smoothly? I never installed chipset drivers or sound drivers because Win7 already had those drivers in the OS.
 
Assuming your hard drives connect in the same manner (SATA/AHCI vs IDE), you should be fine.
 
Yes, they are 3 SATA HDDs and 1 SATA DVD-RW and I have them numbered so I can make sure I connect them back in the same order. Thanks.
 
Just make sure your SATA ports are configured in the same manner, meaning IDE Native/Legacy, or AHCI, and you shouldn't have any issues.
 
I have them set to enhanced IDE so will make sure to set them the same on new mb.
 
Udo said:
I have them set to enhanced IDE so will make sure to set them the same on new mb.
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That's unfortunate. ACHI performance is typically much superior to any form/mode of IDE emulation. The only reason to use IDE mode is if you are installing Windows XP and don't want to have to go through the hassle of inserting a floppy with your ACHI drivers since XP will not recognize ACHI by default and will report that you have no hard drives installed.
 
So they improved how the bus drivers install with Win 7? Used to totally screw XP installs.
 
They may have improved it, but I'd still be weary of moving from enhanced IDE to AHCI without doing a reinstall. Anytime I have a new system like this, I always prefer to do a fresh install anyway. It doesn't take nearly as long as some people want to make you think it does...and I feel better about the setup as well. AHCI doesn't really show much of a speed improvement in real world tests, but it is still the way I'd want mine setup.
 
I have AHCI on but that is a power management option in my mb settings on my Asus P5K. Only option for HDD is enhanced IDE, SATA mode and RAID as far as I remember. I don't want RAID and didn't want to futz with SATA drivers so chose enhanced IDE. As Deacon says, in real world usage there is not much difference at all. Game data loads into ram as needed so there is no performance gain from HDD settings in games unless it is a crap programmed game.

BTW, my new hardware just arrived ten minutes ago so am going to start my new build after this post and after I download latest bios for the mb. If Win7 craps out on me then maybe I will set HDDs to SATA/AHCI mode and do a fresh install of Win7. It's not installing Win7 again that bugs me but having to reinstall all my games etc. that does. It's a very long process because I have so many games and software so am trying to avoid that scenario, especially considering I just re-installed it all when I got Win7 on release day which was not long ago.
 
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With the AHCI drivers built into Win 7 you should be able to switch from IDE to AHCI without any problems, especially if you are still using the default drivers (haven't installed the Intel chipset drivers, for instance).
 
Yes, it was ACPI I was thinking of which is for power management. I see AHCI as option now on this new mb but left it at enhanced IDE (is default anyway) and I just finished installing Intel chipset driver that Asus provided for this mb already too. Windows wanted to do a repair scan but I just forced it to do a normal boot and now have everything running fine. Windows Update updated the LAN driver and I could install the sound driver Asus provides but don't think I need to because Win7 has driver already. Only issue with my new hardware was that I was sent a bad Seasonic S12 850w PSU so had to put my S12 600w back in until I get an RMA. Just need to reactivate Win7 and I am good to go. After that I will try and OC i5 750 to 4.2ghz.

What kind of performance increase can I expect by setting bios to AHCI?
 
GotNoRice said:
That's unfortunate. ACHI performance is typically much superior to any form/mode of IDE emulation.
Click to expand...
... typically much superior? Please ...The only difference I've ever noticed is somewhat less spiking on HDD benchmarks. Throughput, average and minimal are always identical +/- 1MB/s. Under normal usage, absolutely no difference. That's definitely not 'superior'. ymmv but I just don't see any advantage with AHCI except for hot swapping.

Anyways, OP, you should be able to pull that 7 hard drive and drop it in a new system and it will boot and reinstall drivers w/o issue.
 
I switched to AHCI after install of Windows 7 (I forgot to enable AHCI in the BIOS beforehand... oops).

As long as you switch the proper registry key (see here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 ) you should be fine.

Basically, by changing the value of that key, you are just telling the OS to load the built-in generic AHCI driver at boot, so that you can boot into your OS.

After you do that, go ahead and install your manufacturer's AHCI controller drivers, and you'll be good to go.

The reason I enabled AHCI is for hot-swap (so I can use external E-SATA drives as if they were USB, basically. Way faster, though)
 
Forceman said:
Realistically, none, but you will have access to hot swap if that matters.
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No, don't need that and that makes the HDDs show in the system tray as removable, right? Don't want that either.
 
Udo said:
makes the HDDs show in the system tray as removable, right? Don't want that either.
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I can only speak for Intel chipsets, but no, they don't show up as removable drives, like USB devices.
 
Then how do you hot swap if they don't show as removable? Just unplug them without any confirmation that all data has been written to them? I remember on XP I had HDD showing in system tray as removable with AMD set up at one time and I have seen people complain about HDDs showing in system tray as removable too but perhaps that was just on XP.

Doesn't matter as I am leaving them as enhanced IDE and am not going to change bios setting to AHCI.
 
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