Motherboare, SATA & ACHI - Oh, my!

[The Seabat]

Ok, I'm ready to load up my MB with drivers. Got Windows 7 64-bit
installed. This is a Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H motherboard, Rev 2.1.

I went to the source for driver downloads at their site and I'm
confused with all the SATA drivers. I DO NOT plan a RAID setup, just
want to install several SATA hdd. There are 3 drivers and several
variations for each listed. Which ones do I download and install? The
Gigabyte, the AMD or the ones with AHCI?? This is confusing as hell to
me. I would like to hot-swap my eSATA portable drive, but other than
that nothing fancy. Or do I have to mess with SATA drivers at all?
Thanks.

 

[Andy]

Ok, I'm ready to load up my MB with drivers. Got Windows 7 64-bit
installed. This is a Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H motherboard, Rev 2.1.

I went to the source for driver downloads at their site and I'm
confused with all the SATA drivers. I DO NOT plan a RAID setup, just
want to install several SATA hdd. There are 3 drivers and several
variations for each listed. Which ones do I download and install? The
Gigabyte, the AMD or the ones with AHCI?? This is confusing as hell to
me. I would like to hot-swap my eSATA portable drive, but other than
that nothing fancy. Or do I have to mess with SATA drivers at all?
Thanks.

If you connect the eSATA drive to one of the two GSATA connectors,
then install the Gigabyte SATA2 driver. If you already have Windows 7
installed, look at Device Manager to see which interfaces have or need
drivers.

 

[TVeblen]

Ok, I'm ready to load up my MB with drivers. Got Windows 7 64-bit
installed. This is a Gigabyte GA-880GA-UD3H motherboard, Rev 2.1.

I went to the source for driver downloads at their site and I'm
confused with all the SATA drivers. I DO NOT plan a RAID setup, just
want to install several SATA hdd. There are 3 drivers and several
variations for each listed. Which ones do I download and install? The
Gigabyte, the AMD or the ones with AHCI?? This is confusing as hell to
me. I would like to hot-swap my eSATA portable drive, but other than
that nothing fancy. Or do I have to mess with SATA drivers at all?
Thanks.

The AHCI/RAID driver is to utilize either AHCI or RAID. It will not
automatically set up a RAID array. To hot swap SATA drives install the
AHCI Driver. You can do this after a Windows 7 install.

The motherboard has two controllers, the standard 6 port AMD one, and an
additional xx port one. The second set of drivers is for that other
controller. The brand of controller will be in your specs

 

[The Seabat]

OK, the AMD driver should be no problem. But the two extra ports are
controlled by Gigabyte drivers, one which is RAID and the other is
AHCI. Do I install both of them or just the AHCI driver? Also, are you
sure I can install them after Windows installation? The driver d/l
page on Gigabyte all mention loading them at F6 during install. These
instructions are for WinXP and Vista and I don't know iffn Win 7 is
different or not! Maybe I should just load 'em all and hope for the
best. Thanks for any help.

 

[TVeblen]

OK, the AMD driver should be no problem. But the two extra ports are
controlled by Gigabyte drivers, one which is RAID and the other is
AHCI. Do I install both of them or just the AHCI driver? Also, are you
sure I can install them after Windows installation? The driver d/l
page on Gigabyte all mention loading them at F6 during install. These
instructions are for WinXP and Vista and I don't know iffn Win 7 is
different or not! Maybe I should just load 'em all and hope for the
best. Thanks for any help.

Yes Windows 7 is different. It contains it's own generic AHCI driver
that it will install if AHCI mode is set in your BIOS prior to the install.

There is no F6 option. There is a point in the installation where you
can load additional drivers. If I recall correctly it is in the
beginning, at the same point you can choose, create, or format drives.
Look at the bottom of the screen and you will see a selection along the
lines of "Advanced". It's been a while.

But you can skip that step and just install Windows 7 staright up. After
the install everything will work, but you will get improved
functionality if you install the AHCI driver for your motherboard. It's
a simple driver upgrade.

The Gigabyte ports can be used to create a separate RAID array. If you
are not interested in doing RAID, then install the Gigabyte AHCI driver
and you will have an additional 2 SATA ports instead.