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HP Recommended

Last night I was poking around in the BIOS and noticed my SATA was set to IDE, rather than AHCI+RAID.

 

I don't use RAID, but I thought that AHCI was the norm now..

 

So this morning, i decided to change it to see what happens.. After all, what could go wrong?? 


After a couple of restarts where it would detect my drives and asked me to save, Windows started booting.. But it took a while.. MUCH longer than before.. And then... BSOD.. With an error something like "can't read boot disk".

 

At this point I feared the worst and figured I had done something bad.. But I changed the SATA back to IDE and rebooted and its fine again.

 

So does anyone know, is IDE mode OK? Should I switch to AHCI? And if so, how?? I guess this requires some work under Windows which isn't goign to be easy. That said, I have just read an article about this and its as simple as a registry DWORD change and a reboot, so perhaps its not so bad.

 

I am using a modern SSD but reasonably small (250Gb) SSD as my "OS" drive.. And I have a 4TB 5400 RPM NAS drive, so the PC is not exactly built for performance.

 

I guess I should just leave it alone, but wondered if anyone has any thoughts or advice about the benifits of AHCI.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions
HP Recommended

You gave me the inspiration that I needed, so I did it.. And it was easy.. TOO Easy.

 

I found this little guide and it worked first time.

 

1. In an admin CMD tool "bcdedit /set safeboot minimal"

2. Reboot and then F10 into BIOS

3. Change from IDE to AHCI+RAID

4. Boot (now into safe mode)

5. In an admin CMD tool "bcdedit /deletevalue safeboot"

6. Reboot

 

Now it boots into Win10 and is using AHCI instead of IDE.. Havn't noticed much difference yet.. But happy to tick this one off the list.

 

Cheers


Jon

 

THANK YOU for writing such clear and accurate instructions!

Peace...

View solution in original post

3 REPLIES 3
HP Recommended

Hi:

 

The default setting is AHCI+RAID, which provides much better drive performance over IDE.

 

So if you have found a way such as this to change the controller setting in Windows, by all means, do it if you can.

 

https://winaero.com/blog/switch-from-ide-to-achi-after-installing-windows-7-or-windows-8/

 

I did it once on a HP dc7800 where the setting was on RAID but I wanted it on AHCI. 

 

That model has 3 separate drive controllers settings...IDE, RAID and AHCI.

 

You can also change the setting in the BIOS and reinstall the OS.  I have done it that way as well.

 

HP Recommended

You gave me the inspiration that I needed, so I did it.. And it was easy.. TOO Easy.

 

I found this little guide and it worked first time.

 

1. In an admin CMD tool "bcdedit /set safeboot minimal"

2. Reboot and then F10 into BIOS

3. Change from IDE to AHCI+RAID

4. Boot (now into safe mode)

5. In an admin CMD tool "bcdedit /deletevalue safeboot"

6. Reboot

 

Now it boots into Win10 and is using AHCI instead of IDE.. Havn't noticed much difference yet.. But happy to tick this one off the list.

 

Cheers


Jon

 

THANK YOU for writing such clear and accurate instructions!

Peace...

HP Recommended

You're very welcome.

 

That is great news it was so easy to do and was done without any hiccups.

† The opinions expressed above are the personal opinions of the authors, not of HP. By using this site, you accept the <a href="https://www8.hp.com/us/en/terms-of-use.html" class="udrlinesmall">Terms of Use</a> and <a href="/t5/custom/page/page-id/hp.rulespage" class="udrlinesmall"> Rules of Participation</a>.