[SOLVED] help setting Sata mode for SSD & HDD in old mobo with RAID controller for SATA III

[Dasa]

Hello,

I want to install windows 10 on new SSD and will also have an HDD (I think ur uses IDE)

My mobo MSI P55A Fuzion (MS-7688) is old and uses raid controller for SATA III speeds as far as I know, else it will use SATA II for slower speeds, many say the raid controller does not work correctly in this generation and I have no clue if RAID will have negative effects in the future.

My SSD and everyone online says use ACHI for SSD installation

So in my special case I should skip IDE and ACHI and use RAID ? I am getting this right?

Do I have to do several steps in Bios or just one click (ACHI to RAID)

Also should I use RAID for the HDD or use ACHI or IDE?

Then I have to download raid controller driver once inside windows 10, right?


EDIT!!!!!!!!

I messed things up the controller is Marvell not RAID and I have no clue if it requires RAID or not... the post is so messed up!

 

[RealBeast]

Your motherboard has 6 dark colored SATA II (and 2 SATA III Marvel white colored) ports, none are IDE. (If you actually have an antique IDE HDD it's time for an update.)

Just go into the bios and disable the Marvell controller and set the SATA type to AHCI from RAID. Those old Marvel controllers were not too reliable. Use any of the six dark SATA II ports, you really won't notice much difference except on large sequential transfers that are not common in average use.

Other than the ability to use the TRIM command with RAID, it is essentially just an extended command set that contains all of the AHCI command. Nonetheless, I occasionally do a manual trim and prefer not to just rely on garbage collection so I would make the change to AHCI.

 

[popatim]

One of my HTPC's has this same setup and the Intel Sata2 ports are faster then the marvel Sata3 ports.

 

[Dasa]

Your motherboard has 6 dark colored SATA II (and 2 SATA III Marvel white colored) ports, none are IDE. (If you actually have an antique IDE HDD it's time for an update.)

Just go into the bios and disable the Marvell controller and set the SATA type to AHCI from RAID. Those old Marvel controllers were not too reliable. Use any of the six dark SATA II ports, you really won't notice much difference except on large sequential transfers that are not common in average use.

Other than the ability to use the TRIM command with RAID, it is essentially just an extended command set that contains all of the AHCI command. Nonetheless, I occasionally do a manual trim and prefer not to just rely on garbage collection so I would make the change to AHCI.

Hey RealBeast,

My biggest problem is that since I got a PC I once maybe touched bios to play with controllers and despite what I wrote I have no clue what I am talking about, the problem was is that I don't understand the language used "On-chip controller" or what disables what, etc. and I was terrified to change anything because I once caused trouble by changing DVD drive settings and changing it back did not make things right.

I had to read a little about how motherboard are built and bridges and how they evolved and googled the meaning of a "chipset" and read every line in the manual but I still didn't have a clue what does the commands of the bios mean so I did the last obvious thing, I started changing settings and seeing what will happen, it was much easier than I expected, for some reason I expected an avalanche for some reason

In the end I put my DVD-drive and Blu-ray drive on Marvell controller and used IDE for Marvell, and put my SSD and old HDD on Intel controller with AHCI

Yes Marvell with AHCI was slower than Intel AHCI

I am very happy with the PC, with upgraded RAM and SSD, Windows 10 is as light as a feather, I was literally suffocating on Windows 7 with 4 GB of RAM and an HDD, didn't expect that much happiness would come from 80 dollar upgrade.

I haven't used a firewall or antivirus yet except window's own defense but it would still be fine with those upgrade I guess.

Thanks for the reply!

One of my HTPC's has this same setup and the Intel Sata2 ports are faster then the marvel Sata3 ports.

Yeah, I googled it a lot, never seen anyone having it working correctly, damn you MSI, I paid 50% more to get this motherboard just for the SATA III

 

[popatim]

It's not just MSI, several manufacturers setup their boards this way and it's not Marvell's fault, the chip is capable but was ham-stringed by the manufacturers only giving the chip 1 pcie2 lane to work with.
My board is an Asus.

 

[RealBeast]

It's not just MSI, several manufacturers setup their boards this way and it's not Marvell's fault, the chip is capable but was ham-stringed by the manufacturers only giving the chip 1 pcie2 lane to work with.
My board is an Asus.

Totally agree, I had several ASUS and a Gigabyte from that period and they all had that same issue. Fortunately, now Intel (and AMD) have loads of good stuff on their boards. Sure wish Intel would look into more PCIe lanes to work with though -- nowadays 28 isn't cutting it as my lower end boards cannot do x8x8x8 that I need for a GPU and higher end controllers/10Gbs cards.

Happy New Year to you both!