Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps) said:
It's about the HP m9088hk again.
Should I use Rapid Storage Manager or the older Matrix Storage Manager?
And how could I be sure that 32-bit Vi$ta is using AHCI to access the
SATA hard disk?
The Rapid Storage Manager is apparently a re-branding of Matrix Storage Manager.
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-031456.htm
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At the very least, to be able to use AHCI, the BIOS must be set to AHCI or
RAID on the disk interfaces. If you're using Compatible or Enhanced (plain
modes for SATA drives), then an OS like Vista, will use a non-AHCI driver.
If you look in the INF file in the installer, it will have a line used
later in Device Manager. For example I found this in the f6flpy96x86.zip package:
PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_2922&CC_0106.DeviceDesc = "Intel(R) ICH9R/DO/DH SATA AHCI Controller"
So if it was running AHCI, at least that line implies there'll be an entry
in Device Manager like that one. Look in Device Manager, for an
entry with the word "AHCI" in it. That is the simplest test I can think of.
Things AHCI gives you:
1) Hot plug. There should be an icon in the tray, something about "Safe Removal"
in it, and if you see that, and your drive is in the list, then chances are good
that the AHCI driver is in place. You cannot Safely Remove the C: drive, so
you'll be prevented from doing that. But a second, data drive, can be disconnected
and reconnected, hot.
2) NCQ. AHCI should give native command queueing. This gives the disk drive permission
to reorder the execution of commands given to it, which is more efficient for
server (multi-user) applications. If the queue depth builds, because the disk
cannot respond fast enough, in theory, the disk may be operated in a slightly
more efficient manner. If NCQ was not present, then the IDE disk would handle one
operation at a time, and could not optimize which request gets done first.
NCQ only makes sense, if there will be a lot of programs using the disk at the
same time, and a significant portion of the time, the queue has grown to the disk.
Otherwise, it is even possible, that NCQ will be slower, than ordinary disk operation.
With Intel, installing an AHCI driver, also allows a painless migration to RAID
later. For a lot of people, that is the reason to install it - because they
plan on testing RAID later.
HTH,
Paul
