Upgrade HP Compaq dc7800 to use SSD

[meniga]

Recently cloned a windows 10 Conventional Drive 500GB to a 120GB SSD but found it would not boot or allow windows boot disk to work.

Did some research and found an article on HP web site from 2016 that indicated it is "not possible".

Accepted the challenge and first upgraded BIOS from v01.32? to latest v01.35 and Windows 10 booted fine from the SSD.yt

Checked BIOS and found it now shows AHCI as well as IDE and RAID.

Found a procedure to change Windows 10 from IDE Mode to AHCI without reinstalling and now I have a HP DC7800 running Windows 10 from an SSD using AHCI.

[old_geekster]

@meniga , welcome back to the forum.

I don't know who said that your computer wouldn't boot from a SSD, but I am glad that you found out how to do it.  I haven't seen a HP computer that wouldn't boot from a SSD.  At least, so far!!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, @meniga 

Thanks for the info regarding the addition of the AHCI setting in BIOS v1.35.

I've had a SSD in my dc7800 for a couple of years now, and I had BIOS v1.35 installed for quite some time.

I always had the drive controller setting in my dc7800 set to RAID, which works about the same as AHCI.

In Windows 10, you can automatically or manually TRIM the SSD in RAID mode, so I never even bothered to look into the fact that v1.35 added an AHCI drive controller setting.

So this morning, I followed the instructions at the link below, and changed the setting to AHCI from RAID.

http://triplescomputers.com/blog/uncategorized/solution-switch-windows-10-from-raidide-to-ahci-opera...

Worked like a charm.

Also if you are interested...optional tweaks...

The W7 Soundmax audio driver works much better than the default Microsoft W10 audio driver.

After you install the driver, go to the windows control panel, Hardware and Sound>Sound>find the Soundmax control and check the box to enable multi-streaming.  Restart the PC and go to the windows control panel>hardware and sound>sound>manage audio devices, and set the PC speakers as the default.  You will find the sound quality to be much clearer.

I also updated the sata ahci controller driver from the W10 Standard AHCI controller from 2006 to the W7 driver from 2011.

I have zipped up and attached the 64 bit AHCI driver below...here are the instructions to install it...

Unzip the file to its folder.

Go to the device manager.  Click to expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers device manager category. 

Click on the driver tab.  Click on Update Driver.  Select the Browse my computer for driver software option, and then at the bottom of that window, select the Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.

Click on Have Disk and browse to the unzipped driver folder>iaAHCI (setup information file)>select the Intel(R) ICH9R/DO/DH SATA AHCI Controller from the list, click Next, and the driver will install.

Then restart the PC, and you should have a driver from 05/20/2011, 10.6.0.1002.