How to enable Ide, Ahci, n/m raid mode without reinstalling.

[win7-64]

After seeing a post of other forum member about switching between different modes i decided to post about the registry changes which allow you to switch between Ide, Ahci and non-member raid modes in windows 7 using a single disk without re-installing and showing the performance differences.

It should also work in vista, i dont know if it works in xp but someone could test it out.

First backup/image all your information incase anything goes wrong but it is just a matter of 3/4 registry changes which are easily reversable.

Go into the registry using regedit and change each of the "start" values in the registry keys below from 3 to 0 and this will allow you to change between the different modes by just changing the option in your bios each time you reboot.


HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\servic es\pciide

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\servic es\msahci

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\servic es\iaStorV

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\servic es\iaStor


You might not have the last registry key (iastor) as this is installed in the registry with the intel raid drivers, the default windows 7 raid driver uses the iastorV key.

These are some pics of the performance differences for me, the first pic is running in Ide, second is Ahci, third non-member raid.

For me non-member raid is the best performer but the wiper is too slow in this mode. By easily changing modes in the bios any time i want to run the wiper i can switch to ide/Ahci mode run it and reboot switching back to non-member raid.

[tuney]

thanks win7, nice oc on your c2d. this will definitely be helpful to some. Halk posted a thread reply (i hope i get this correct) that he does his installs using the ahci drivers which allows him to switch storage configurations without having to do any registry editing. i think the registry for xp requires much more editing to do this, i remember seeing the "how to" on technet and it was quite long.

[win7-64]

thanks win7, nice oc on your c2d.

For some reason certain programs like pcmark05 report my cpu as being overclocked to 4ghz because i'm using a cpu multiplier of 7 instead of it's default of 9. Unfortunately it's only running at 3.1ghz, but 2.4 to 4ghz would have been a nice overclock.

[slickric21]

With Xp its equally as easy....... for Intel chipsets at least. Just need a driver file present in windows\system32 (iaStor.sys) and a simple reg string added to reg file.
http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-hardwa...ml#post1470368

Done it myself in the past when on Xp32, took seconds.

[matnlaci]

For me non-member raid is the best performer but the wiper is too slow in this mode. By easily changing modes in the bios any time i want to run the wiper i can switch to ide/Ahci mode run it and reboot switching back to non-member raid.

I was told in a different posting that wiper wouldn't even run, even slowly in non-member raid. When I try to run it on my non-member raid vertex 60gb, I get a msg. that it cannot find any drives.

[tuney]

matnlaci, switch to ahci and the latest version of wiper should work. if not, tweak as above and run wiper in ide native/enhanced

[x64Man]

Thanks, this worked great for me, now I can swith to IDE if I need too.

[MCinCA]

Thanks for this tip! I found that it's sort of necessary to switch between modes when using Wiper (or flashing) and all other times. Previously, when I used the non-"R" "ICH10 Family 6-Port AHCI..." driver for the ICH10R controller, it was the only way I could to get Wiper 525 to work quickly in AHCI mode. But I also noticed that my Vertex was listed as running on MWDMA-2 in Device Manager. So to get it to UDMA 4 or higher, I need to use the Intel drivers.

[Hell Racer]

Is it possible to switch from RAID non-member to ACHI or IDE in Windows XP?

[d_s_willoughby]

errr, not to question your logic here but do you mean using a single drive in non member raid as your OS drive, and changing it to IDE mode in the bios, then rebooting to be able to use IDE mode and wiper properly?

If so, you shouldn't need to change a thing on vista or 7. I just change the bios and reboot. The first time you do it windows will tell you it's updating hardware, then after that you don't see it again. Again I could be wrong, and this may not work for all, but I dare say anyone on an ICH8/9/10R should be fine.....

[sarkyman]

My registry values were

pciide 3
msahci 3
iaStorV 3
iaStor 0

So I guess I had to change iaStor from 0 to 3 and pciide from 3 to 0.

Then I rebooted and switched from raid to ide mode in bios. I got BSOD (stop 0x0000007b) and with ide mode and with raid mode after registry values so I had to restore my system. Did I something wrong? I use win 7 x64 7100 build, installed them on RAID mode, and vertex is a non raid member.

[Praz]

So your system was set to RAID with the boot drive as a non-member drive? If that is the case to switch to IDE you should need to nothing other then change the setting in the BIOS. I install as non-member RAID and swith to and boot up in IDE mode all the time.

[win7-64]

My registry values were

pciide 3
msahci 3
iaStorV 3
iaStor 0

So I guess I had to change iaStor from 0 to 3 and pciide from 3 to 0.

Then I rebooted and switched from raid to ide mode in bios. I got BSOD (stop 0x0000007b) and with ide mode and with raid mode after registry values so I had to restore my system. Did I something wrong? I use win 7 x64 7100 build, installed them on RAID mode, and vertex is a non raid member.

Change all 4 registry keys to 0 and if you can set ahci mode in your bios try that first and let it load up the drivers in windows 7, and then try using ide mode in your bios.

If all 4 keys are changed atleast one mode should allow you to get into windows even if ide mode does not work for some strange reason.

The only time i could not use ide mode is when i upgraded to a newer version of windows 7 as a test and i had to use ahci mode first, let it's drivers install in windows/rebooted and then ide mode would work.

[sarkyman]

Both of the above don't work. Same BSOD.

[win7-64]

Both of the above don't work. Same BSOD.

Very strange.

When you change all 4 registry keys "start" to 0 instead of 3 can you get back into windows 7 using non-member raid mode/ahci mode or do you have to restore/reinstall it?

Is it possible to just run the vertex without any other drives connected to see if it does the same thing?