JMicron JMB363 card, AHCI

[mdsharpe]

Hi all.

I recently purchased a PCI-Express card based on JMB363 because JMicron's site claims it supports AHCI 1.0.

Although when booting into Windows 7 it was originally recognised as a Standard AHCI1.0 controller, it also showed two IDE channels beneath in Device Manager, and no drives I attached were recognised until I installed the jmicron drivers.

I have tried flashing the card with the latest Option ROM.

In JMicron's driver and Option ROM notes I have seen mention of "AHCI mode".
Does anyone know if there's a way I can change my card to run in AHCI mode instead of IDE or RAID mode? Note that this is a separate card so there is no relation with the motherboard's BIOS.

Alternatively, if I continue using it as it is, with JMicron drivers, are TRIM commands passed through to SSDs?

Many thanks,

Matt Sharpe
UK

 

[Crashman]

Hi all.

I recently purchased a PCI-Express card based on JMB363 because JMicron's site claims it supports AHCI 1.0.

Although when booting into Windows 7 it was originally recognised as a Standard AHCI1.0 controller, it also showed two IDE channels beneath in Device Manager, and no drives I attached were recognised until I installed the jmicron drivers.

I have tried flashing the card with the latest Option ROM.

In JMicron's driver and Option ROM notes I have seen mention of "AHCI mode".
Does anyone know if there's a way I can change my card to run in AHCI mode instead of IDE or RAID mode? Note that this is a separate card so there is no relation with the motherboard's BIOS.

Alternatively, if I continue using it as it is, with JMicron drivers, are TRIM commands passed through to SSDs?

Many thanks,

Matt Sharpe
UK

The JMB363 is a combo-controller that supports two SATA 3Gb/s channels and two ATA 133 channels. If your drive shows up as AHCI, you're golden and can ignore the two ATA 133 channels.

 

[mdsharpe]

The JMB363 is a combo-controller that supports two SATA 3Gb/s channels and two ATA 133 channels. If your drive shows up as AHCI, you're golden and can ignore the two ATA 133 channels.

Thank you for your incredibly rapid response, Crashman.
I wonder if I could ask for further clarification?

Specifically, how can I tell if the drives are running as proper AHCI?

The only way I can get it to work is with the JMicron driver - I've never got it to function properly with the Microsoft AHCI driver.

The drives currently appear as SCSI drives in Device Manager.

 

[Crashman]

Thank you for your incredibly rapid response, Crashman.
I wonder if I could ask for further clarification?

Specifically, how can I tell if the drives are running as proper AHCI?

The only way I can get it to work is with the JMicron driver - I've never got it to function properly with the Microsoft AHCI driver.

The drives currently appear as SCSI drives in Device Manager.

Oh, someone had a program for that...

I aways set it in BIOS, but that's because I use onboard controllers. Does your card flash a card bios prompt (at boot) that tells you to hit a certain key combination to configure it?

 

[mdsharpe]

Oh, someone had a program for that...

I aways set it in BIOS, but that's because I use onboard controllers. Does your card flash a card bios prompt (at boot) that tells you to hit a certain key combination to configure it?

The card has a BIOS you can access by pressing Ctrl+J or something.
Within, you can configure RAID but that is all.
My drives are listed as "non-RAID".

It does appear that they are hotpluggable... although they are internal drives, so it's quite annoying that they appear in Safely Remove Hardware ;-)

 

[mdsharpe]

I've just read the following in JMicron's FAQ:

Q6: What are the differences between Legacy mode (IDE) and AHCI mode?

Ans: Legacy mode support s OS through legacy IDE driver. Most SATA functions are not supported in Legacy mode, like SATA II 3G, NCQ, HotPlug and etc. JMicron Technology Corp. delivers the worldwide first AHCI compliant eSATA controller and now most of the Operating Systems are "Native Support", which enables SATA II 3G, NCQ, and Hotplug on JMB36X SATA / eSATA controllers.

It would appear that I'm not in Legacy Mode, since I think I have "SATA 3G, NCQ and HotPlug"...

however the FAQ also touches on my other concern i.e. Native Support.

I'd feel a lot more comfortable if I could get the device to work with the default Standard AHCI1.0 controller driver.

 

[mdsharpe]

Further to this I have recieved a response from JMicron:

Our latest BIOS is for RAID and AHCI mode used.
It cannot be changed by command.

And our JMB36x don’t support TRIM commands.
You cannot see IDE HDDs in windows before you install our driver.