SSD drive not working in AHCI mode - but it used to!

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

Here's a conundrum.

This evening I decided to wipe Windows 8 and go back to Windows 7 (lets leave that discussion for another time though!) - I went off to make some dinner after I set the Windows 7 installer running and when I came back I could see my PC had rebooted but was sat on the Intel AHCI BIOS screen and not progressing any further. I rebooted. Same deal.

After a bit of testing (moving ports on the motherboard, swap SATA cable, etc), I concluded that the other drives in my PC detect just fine but the SSD no longer does. It just freezes up the AHCI BIOS. If I disable AHCI and go back to classic mode it detects the drive fine and boots.

It has worked in this configuration now (with AHCI enabled) across several reinstalls of Windows 7 just fine and has been running in this configuration for at least 14 months - this is the first time it's ever done anything like this.

SSD drive is a 64GB Crucial C300. My motherboard is a Gigabyte EP43 DS3. I've read various forums with people experiencing similar issues and, interestingly, on similar motherboards to mine but in almost all their cases their system NEVER detected the SSD in AHCI mode whereas mine has been working fine until today.

Anyone care to have a stab at this one? :)

[+PeterUK MVC]

Are you sure the SSD was running in AHCI on the port it was on? Because in the BIOS there is a option SATA Port0-3 Native Mode and by Default its disabled so with you swapping ports it could have been in Legacy IDE mode on them ports with AHCI on.

Does it run and install windows fine without AHCI?

You could try re-flashing the BIOS.

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

Good question about Native Mode - I can't remember what mode it used to be in before but regardless of whether I changed it to Enabled or Disabled it seemed as long as AHCI was enabled, and the AHCI BIOS was trying to detect the drive it just wouldn't get past the BIOS screen.

Without AHCI enabled at all, yep - it detects the drive the old fashioned way, and then carried on the installation like nothing had happened and is running absolutely fine.

There is a BIOS update available but it's marked as a beta version.. plus it needs to be done the old fashioned way (boot to DOS) so I just thought screw it and left it with AHCI off. Might do some more tinkering though and see if I can do a BIOS update and see if there is a drive firmware update available too.

I would like to upgrade my PC in the not too distant future.. my Quad Core is holding up pretty well for now but an i5 or i7 rig would be nice eventually. Hardware faults are a good motivator to upgrade, but it would be good to get to the bottom of this!

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

Aha - think I found something. This may be useful for some people. I thought it seemed like too much of a coincidence that it worked right up to the point of doing the reinstall...

This thread describes the problem as being near identical to my problem... and also with a similar era Gigabyte motherboard...

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=100387

And this details an explanation and a fix. In short it's something to do with the way Windows has made the partitions on the disk!

http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/38699-ex58-ud5-sata-ahci-not-working-anymore-wont-even-let-me-format-help.html

Hope this is of some use to someone eventually.

[+PeterUK MVC]

So a full wipe of your SSD should fix it nice.

Bit odd you trying windows 8 and it worked fine but reinstalling windows 7 locks up AHCI BIOS.

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

Yeah. And I've reinstalled Windows 7 a few times since having that drive too - this is the first time this has happened.

[nub]

Are you using a different install media? Different SP?

Edit: I should really read the entire thread.

[+Byt Subscriber¹]

Interesting issue you had here, thanks for posting the fix though, ive made a note of it for the future! (I can sense a lot of my clients are going to beg me to reinstall Windows 7 for them once they try Windows 8) hehe