Should SSD & HDD use IDE or AHCI BIOS setting for Windows 10 new System

[ariccougar]

I build a new computer every 5 to 10 years, but this time my brothers surprised me, building one for me as a gift. It has an SSD main disk with Windows 10, and I just put in a second disk (a HDD) for storage.

- Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series 256GB - Main Drive with OS and all Programs.
- Western Digital Black 4TB 256MB Cache, WD4005FZBX HDD - Storage/Data Drive

It has been a long time since I built my last computer, so I'm carefully reviewing everything. The current setting is IDE for all drives in the BIOS. The Windows 10 was installed with it set to IDE apparently. Is it true that Solid State Drives perform faster and better using the AHCI instead of IDE controller type? Would either of my drives (above) benefit significantly by switching from IDE to AHCI? Are there any risks that should be considered? (BIOS allows for SATA 1-4 to have one setting IDE,RAID,AHCI, and SATA 5-6 to be IDE or AHCI.)

As I'll likely keep this computer for 5 to 10 years, I hope to optimize it to use all features available for the best computing experience. Appreciate any insights or advice from experienced users. Thanks.

 

[USAFRet]

The real interesting point i take from your comment here is the idea of installing Macrium on my permanent drive, and having it freeload, taking space forever in all backups and VMs. Obviously, Id like to avoid that if other options exist. But assuming its not a large amount of disk space, and minimal risk to registry corruption, and that it does NOT slow down the system, won't conflict with software I will be installing, then I suppose I can consider installing it. Once its done it can never be undone - all the wonderful options i have today disappear if i do that. So I'll definitely research those issues i listed for another day before considering doing something so drastic to the pure system. [None of these topics ever mattered before, since I would build my own system and just reinstall for issues.]

Macrium isn't some evil space sucker and resource hog.
It's just an application, and a relatively small one at that.
It's just very good at what it does.

You don't need a separate install in each VM.

And be advised, each VM you run will require its own Windows license, if you wish it to be activated.
Windows treats those as individual physical PC's.

But for today, im in need of a drive image solution that doesnt require installing software on the drive to be imaged.

From a different PC, you can create a Macrium Rescue CD or USB.
Boot from that, and you can create an Image of the drive in question. Nothing need be installed on the PC.
NOTE: This Image will have to go to some other drive or partition. You can't create an Image in the same partition that you are imaging.

And im interested in how to create Hyper-V compatible image files from a clean fresh Windows 10 installed SSD.

Disk2vhd
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/disk2vhd
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff458344.aspx


This is my system running 4VM's and the host Win 10 Pro: