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IDE or AHCI??

I

ianc

Weaksauce
Joined
Nov 22, 2005
Messages
84
Not sure if this is the right sub-forum to ask this question, so please move it if its not.

I'm building a c2d system with a 965P-DS3 mobo and a single seagate 80gb sata2 hdd. Other hdd's to be added at a later date, but no raid is planned. Reading the mobo manual, it tells me to prepare a floppy with the sata drivers to be installed when loading the os. This must be done if the drive will be configured for raid or AHCI, but not for IDE if I'm reading it right. So my question is whats the difference between IDE and AHCI and is one better than the other. Also if its ok to configure for IDE do I still have to have a floppy with the drivers ready or can i just skip this step and proceed with the os installation? Thanks.
 
AHCI is like running the drive in SATA mode while IDE mode is pretty much using the drive in IDE compatible.

If in the BIOS the drive is set to run in IDE, you won't need to install drivers, as Windows will detect the drive just fine.

If in the BIOS the drive is set to run in AHCI, you'll need the drivers you mentioned.

I would use AHCI, as it will use more features of your disk. I am not 100% sure, but I think in IDE mode you would be limited to ATA-100 speed, where as with AHCI you would get the SATA 150 or SATA-2 speed capabilities.
 
mr_oh_so_ice said:
I would use AHCI, as it will use more features of your disk. I am not 100% sure, but I think in IDE mode you would be limited to ATA-100 speed, where as with AHCI you would get the SATA 150 or SATA-2 speed capabilities.
Click to expand...
I do not believe that is the case as SATA runs at the bus speed. It is hard to saturate a SATA I bus.
 
ianc said:
Not sure if this is the right sub-forum to ask this question, so please move it if its not.

I'm building a c2d system with a 965P-DS3 mobo and a single seagate 80gb sata2 hdd. Other hdd's to be added at a later date, but no raid is planned. Reading the mobo manual, it tells me to prepare a floppy with the sata drivers to be installed when loading the os. This must be done if the drive will be configured for raid or AHCI, but not for IDE if I'm reading it right. So my question is whats the difference between IDE and AHCI and is one better than the other. Also if its ok to configure for IDE do I still have to have a floppy with the drivers ready or can i just skip this step and proceed with the os installation? Thanks.
Click to expand...

All I can think of is that the AHCI driver should enable NCQ and hot swap capability. It's the latest standardized interface with SATA chipsets - the Linux AHCI driver covers several chipsets and works well.
 
Thanks for the answers.

Powered it up for the first time and went into the bios where sata/raid was already enabled and IDE was defaulted. So I just let it carry on with the xp install, followed by the mobo drivers install and everything is up and running. No need for me to have a seperate floppy of sata drivers. :)

edit: speeling
 
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