Why am I able to switch between IDE and AHCI without errors?

[Megalith]

I accidentally booted into AHCI mode by accident last night and found that I had no immediate errors or BSODs. How is this possible? From everything I've read, if you installed in IDE mode and try to boot in AHCI, you're going to run into serious problems unless you tweak the registry.

 

[SirMaster]

Not sure why you would have to change the registry. What if you are using linux?

I've changed between modes before and didn't notice any problems as well.

 

[tangoseal]

No not really. If you installed the drivers for AHCI and they reside on your system then you can easily switch between the two.

IDE is generic and will work with ANYTHING on earth.
AHCI is probably what you installed windows on and accidentally switched to IDE and have been using it for quite some time. Then when you switched back to AHCI you probably thought you just accidentally switched to it for the first time.

 

[Megalith]

Okay, I guess what happened was that Windows installed AHCI drivers in addition to IDE drivers because my secondary SATA controller only runs on AHCI, and it was left active (even though I only use it for an external enclosure).