Changing from RAID to AHCI

Anonymous
2010-10-28T12:24:52+00:00

Hi,

on my Dell E6510 I have my disk drive set to RAID mode. I have issues using the eSata port so I want to switch to AHCI. I followed the instructions here:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976. However when I boot my system after setting the disk mode to AHCI in the BIOS I see the Windows logo (using Win7 x64) and some seconds later I get a bluescreen with a message I can't read because the system is rebooting. Changing the BIOS back to RAID brings up the system again...

Anything I can do to make AHCI working?

Thanks,


Thomas Pagel

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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Anonymous
2010-11-03T18:05:23+00:00

Hi Thomas,

Thank you for your post.

I believe I have the solution to your problem and I verified it against a Dell machine that has similar controller with your machine. Changing from AHCI to RAID,http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 fix will work.  

Changing from RAID to AHCI, you need one more step. Msahci driver requires Atapi.sys miniport to be loaded during boot as well. So you need to change theStart value to 0 for both of the following entries in your registry. You can use regedit.exe utility. 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi

Or you can also simply run the below command lines in an elevated window.

REG ADD HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci /v Start /d 0 /f /t REG_DWORDREG ADD HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi /v Start /d 0 /f /t REG_DWORD

Regards

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-08-16T13:31:52+00:00

    A shot in the dark...have you considered switching the OS to the new SSD? Going back to the original post back in 2010 the OP had the same issue with a Dell laptop set in RAID, an another response was to keep the RAID but set the controllers to AHCI to get the better speeds. It entails a lot of reading but did see it on here.

    In my case I had a HDD then installed an SSD for the OS [Samsung] an HP is similar in that the default BIOS settings were for RAID an the native controller was SATA2 yet the HP specs called it a SATA3 mobo and the only way I could attain that was completely erase/delete the controller drivers and let windows update the drivers with the standard controllers. BTW I noticed those lists I posted are CMD prompts instead of having to search in the registry files...anyway it seems your setup requires a little extra digging maybe in the Dell forums  addressing that mobo-processor-hard drive setup. 

    These companies like Dell & HP do their own thing and come up with some strange setups. My HP mobo was AMD based yet the holes for the heatsink were for Intels. Seems like they had made too many mobos an ran out of Intel processors and threw in AMDs to make up the difference. I spent hours talking to HP about the SATA3 speeds and they didn't know why themselves. I think it worked for me because I was using another new hard drive and started fresh although I did do a migration from the HDD. You seem to have a unique situation with that proprietary SSD...it seems strange that Dell would have a single SSD on RAID as it is for multiple drives and you don't need that for solid state drives anyway;  it was really designed [in my understanding] to not have to defrag mechanical hard drives and to spread data evenly around. The bad part about older RAID was if one drive went out they all went out then they came out with RAID 0 which was supposed to make backups but personally I went with AHCI for the speeds and defrag my HDDs regularly and if one goes out I don't lose any data.

    If you find out do let me know how it worked out. Wish I could be of more help. I eventually moved on to a complete new computer and built it piece by piece from the ground up as I game a lot and am always looking to gain speeds and stay up with all the newer stuff like gfx cards and processors and whatnot. Good luck man.

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  2. Anonymous
    2016-08-16T00:06:04+00:00

    Thanks!

    That's all I have tried without luck. It turns out, that my primary drive is NVMe, so its performance would degrade in AHCI. So the problem how do I enhance the situation for the secondary drive.

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