Sata Bios

[Giuseppina Worster]

Bad things will probably happen if you change controller mode from IDE to RAID. Unless you first back up your data, then reconfigure BIOS, connect up appropriate drives to appropriate connectors, configure RAID, reinstall OS and restore data.

My initial guess was that "IDE" refers to a pair of internal PATA (IDE) connector for the VIA 8237A controller and that "RAID" refers to a pair of internal SATA connectors for the same controller. In that case You could probably only be using one or the other pair of connectors at a time.

For some reason, no one has mentioned the obvious differences between IDE and RAID (AHCI). IDE is a software EMULATION mode that allows operating systems that don't natively support AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) and SATA to still be able to detect and use your drives as if they were connected to an IDE controller.

For maximum performance, you should always put your SATA controller in AHCI or RAID mode. Please note that you cannot easily make this change AFTER installing the operating system. It is best to enable it and then install the OS.

Put simply, no you cannot change the bios setting once the OS is installed, or it will bluescreen on you. IDE mode on that particular board is for when you do not have more than one hard drive and have no need for Raid.

To clarify the answer from @RedGrittyBrick - changing the mode from IDE to RAID will very likely cause problems. The reason for this is simple - your OS expects a given driver to work with the installed hardware. When you change this BIOS setting the way the OS interprets the hardware changes and it very likely will result in a BSOD.

That being said there are certain interchangeable settings from the OS's perspective. As long as the drive is presented in the same fashion the OS does not care. When I first received my new laptop (a Dell E6420) I had an existing eSATA enclosure I wished to use with it. Even if you do blue screen your system a few times you should be able to restore access by resetting your settings to their current configuration.

RAID - Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Basically, this is where you have two or more hard drives acting as one single hard drive. This is desirable in systems where the possibility of loosing data at any one instance is critical and/or where an overall better r/w speed is desirable. But just enabling RAID in the BIOS is only the first step to obtaining a true RAID system. You still need to do other things like "stripe" each drive (meaning format and loose whatever is on them) in order to properly configure a RAID system.

SATA - Serial ATA, or Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. SATA and PATA are both IDE interfaces only SATA is faster than PATA (which some people say is contrary to electronic theory since parallel connections should be faster). So if you only have one hard drive you might as well leave the BIOS alone and set it to IDE. But really, it doesn't matter. That is, unless/until you format/prepare your drive(s).

Now if you do want to get better performance from your hard drives, you probably should be looking at installing or updating better chipset drivers and/or adjusting your drive controller properties to allow DMA (Direct Memory Access). That's usually done for you in Windows. But I digress. Hopefully, that answers it.

I am upgrading my M.2 SSD to a 512 GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus and don't see the option to change from sata mode to pci-e mode to take advantage of the greater speed. Anyone have any solutions? I am working on a HP ENVY x360 Convertible

That is not something you need to do in the BIOS. The system either is designed to work with an NVME/PCIe M.2 disk or it is not. The specs for your model say the existing M.2 delivered from the factory is NVME/PCIe so you can upgrade it to a larger capacity Samsung Evo 970 without issues or needing to adjust the BIOS.

I do not have a BIOS simulator for that model but I have not seen a "mode" setting in the BIOS for M.2 SSDs. Can you confirm the model of the SSD from device manager which will tell us for sure that you have an NVME M.2? Maybe a screen shot of the BIOS setting you are talking about?

That is an NVME M.2 and I suggest you run Crystal DiskMark (free download) on it. If it were in SATA mode transfer speed would be about 550 Mbps and as NVME you should get something over 2000 Mbps. Anyway if the Toshiba works and is recognized the Samsung 970 Evo also will work and be recognized and then the only issue is whether its performing as it should. I have seen some complaints that Ryzen systems seem to be locked into an x2 PCIe mode instead of x4 but that would mean your disk read speed would be more like 1200 or so rather than closer to 3000 in x4 mode.

When I try to connect a SSD sata drive the BIOS does not see the drive. F10 to enter BIOS and the drive is not there. HDD drives I have no problem. I have tried several brand and sizes of SSD drives and none will work. The SSD drives however

The drives I tried were Western Digital blue and green SSD SATA 240GB and SanDisk pro 240gb. Non formatted disk should not be a problem if you are doing a new Windows install. Windows will automatically do that. I did think about that maybe SSD behave different than HDD drives so I did format the drives first. Any SATA HDD I connect direct to the motherboard the BIOS reds no problem, not SSD SATA drives

This is getting stranger as a go. I installed the SSD in my old HP 8510p laptop, Did a clean windows install and the drive works fine. I ran a UEFI diagnostic check on my HP 705 G1 SFF computer with the HDD drive that has been working fine. It tested with no errors. I took out that drive and and installed (only) the SSD drive that was tested on my laptop and ran another UEFI diagnostic test. The test said no drive installed. I understand it could not have booted because it would have the wrong drivers but the BIOS should have seen it. You mentioned AHCI and not RAID, my computer model recommends IDE.

I have never used 705 G1 and it is strange your model recommends IDE. IDE mode provides better compatibility with some older hardware. However, your motherboard has SATA connectors, not PATA so those older disk drives cannot easily be attached.

I do not think AHCI is the problem because the SSD installed and booted fine with my old HD 8510P laptop that does not have AHCI option. Anyway, I removed my HDD and installed the SSD and switched my BIOS to AHCI. I saved and restarted the computer and I received a message IDE device Failed. I turned off the computer and inserted a USB windows 10 install drive with the SSD still installed in SATA, got the same message. I reset the BIOS back to IDE and with the SSD still connected and the Windows install USB inserted the computer booted to the USB. Windows install informed that no drive was detected for installation. Now why would it not boot with the USB drive when set to AHCI but it did boot when switched back to IDE

I do not think AHCI is the problem because the SSD installed and booted fine with my old HD 8510P laptop that does not have AHCI option. Anyway, I removed my HDD and installed the SSD and switched my BIOS to AHCI. I saved and restarted the computer and I received a message IDE device Failed.

When you formatted it using the USB adapter the layout was IDE: "cylinder head sector". You then switched to AHCI and got the warning it was in IDE layout and AHCI was unable to find the boot sector (or the sector having the map of where things are)

I once rescued a misflashed 1062 that was hanging at boot by hotplugging it into the pcie ports and flashing in windows, the dos method of flashing was inaccessible to do it since the misflashed adapter was hanging the machine at init time.

The firmware is compatible with 1064 as i test it personally and also i found others that have successfully flashed it.
So what is your card and what it your firmware chip?
Can you write the letters from the chip here? And can you post a pic from the adapter?

You can definately read and write these chinese adapters without it being powered or desoldered, ive done it in another forum to hoover off and hex edit the stock bios for my own backup purposes, but it is very very finicky with the clamp.

CH341A is a cheap USB IC programmer, not an SPI IC (Firmware) model.
Firmware flashes are last resource for trying to solve compatibility, performance or stability issues, it is NOT the primary concern of a regular user.

I have an USB install of Arch Linux and it works pretty well for me, I can access the files on the SATA drive, browse the intarwebs and code, but I can't really paint on it and that forces me to have a Windows installation on the hard drive.

But the problem is that the BIOS doesn't see the disk and since it isn't a Linux kernel I can't refer to it through UID and I'm not entirely sure GRUB can see non-BIOS disks either, which doing ls from GRUB commandline seems to confirm, as it only lists the USB stick and it's partitions. Is there any GRUB 2 module or other way to have it recognize the disk plugged into the controller, so I can chainload into Windows?
The Windows bootloader seems to be capable of booting from a disk not recognized by BIOS so as long as I chainload into it I guess it'll be all right.

Executing insmod ata in grub console seems to break everything (it seems to unmount the bootloader filesystem, as all commands are replied to with "grub: disk not recognized" or somesuch). Adding this option to grub.cfg breaks booting, with 5 messages about disk not being recognized (I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact that if everything worked there would be exactly 5 partitons).