No option to change the SATA mode to AHCI in the BIOS. SERIOUS ISSUE!

[tanay_mayee]

I need to change the SATA mode to AHCI in order to run my recently purchased Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD at its peak performance but I'm not able to see any option in the BIOS to change the SATA mode to AHCI... like seriously HP I cannot even change the SATA mode to AHCI? I think I would have to recommend people not to buy HP products if that's the case and as this is not the first time that I'm facing issues with my HP laptop. If anyone has any idea how to change the mode to AHCI please help. It's strange that after paying that much money for a laptop, they're not even allowing you to change the SATA mode to AHCI, very disappointed with HP and their customer service is the worst, only the HP community is helpful at times. 

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

The drive controller your notebook has should already be set to AHCI by default and the AHCI controller should be listed in the device manager under the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers device manager category.

A NVMe SSD uses a separate NVMe storage controller driver, not AHCI.

No consumer class notebooks have been able to have the storage controller settings changed by the user in years.

If you bought an Asus, Dell or Lenovo PC, it would be the same.

I recommend that you install the Samsung NVMe storage controller driver for the Evo 970 from the link below.

Samsung SSD 970 EVO | Samsung V-NAND Consumer SSD | Samsung Semiconductor Global Website

[tanay_mayee]

Thanks for your reply @Paul_Tikkanen. I checked under the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and yes it has the Standard SATA AHCI controller. Also, it's true that an NVMe drive uses the NVMe storage controller, I guess the Samsung team couldn't understand the issue so they just forwarded the troubleshooting steps to me. And yeah I'm already using Samsung's latest NVMe driver, so no issues there.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

I'm surprised the AHCI controller is the basic Microsoft one from who knows when.

If you want the latest Intel SATA AHCI driver, I have zipped it up and attached it below.

Download and unzip the file to its folder.

Do not do anything with the files in the folder.

Go to the device manager, click to expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers device manager category.

Click on the standard AHCI controller listed there.

Click on the driver tab.  Click on Update driver.

Select the Browse my computer for drivers option, and browse to the driver folder you unzipped.

Make sure the Include subfolders box is checked and the driver should install.

Then restart the PC, and the drive controller will now be named properly as an Intel SATA AHCI controller of some model.