Switching to AHCI, Code 10 Error in Device Manager for 2 Hard Drives

[IbSta]

Hello people of Neowin,

Hoping someone can help with a silly problem (I'm looking at you Budman or anyone else with helpful information). Silly me when I bought my new PC roughly 2 years ago I opted for all the latest and greatest at the time still have no need for another major upgrade as my current system is suitable enough for me.

Motherboard = Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6

Processor = Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme OC' 3.7

Memory = OCZ Reaper Memory = 8 GB

OS = Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit (Yes Legit)

Video Card = NVidia GeForce 280

Case = Antec Twelve Hundred Black Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Power supply = Corsair AX1200

Total Hard drives = 8 SATA 2 drives

Others = 2 IDE (1 CD-ROM, 1 CD Burner) also 1 SAN attached to my PC through a eSATA card (16 TB total)

Monitor = 24' Dell

Hopefully that gives you an idea of what I'm working with. As of now my PC works great no issues. I somehow forgot to enable AHCI when I installed Windows 7 last year and now as I was searching the web mindlessly I came across a forum (sorry I tried posting the link but neowin kept calling it SPAM) anyways interestingly enough I was hyped to try it out so I got home did the regedit restarted my computer went into my BIOS enabled the onboard SATA controller from IDE to AHCI and the SATA RAID/AHCI from IDE to AHCI. System booted up fine I noticed in the POST it skipped 2 Hard Drives and my CD-ROM and Burner, which is fine didn’t care. I got into Windows and as the forum said Windows installed some drivers and asked me to restart my PC. I did this with no errors. I loaded up Windows again and my driver showed up except for 2 of them 1 is a 500 GB group’s drive where my family stores things like pictures, resumes and school stuff and another is my 1 TB Hitachi hard drive where I store my music and TV shows. In device manager 2 of my ATA controllers has the little yellow exclamation with a Code 10 device could not start. Disk Management shows the drives as 'FAILED' re-activating the volume does nothing. I do understand why 2 of them would be failing (my CD-ROM drive and Burner because they are IDE) but why not my 2 hard drives? So i did some more Google searches and someone had an issue similar to mine and it was related to having 2 drives connected to the GSATA ports (Gigabytes SATA controller I assume?)Which I actually did have 2 drives plugged into it. I reversed the changes and everything is OK now. However, I was just curious if anything could be done to make it work? If not well nothing I can do but move on. I’ll never use the NCQ feature or the hot swapping drives; I really just wanted the less wear and tear aspect of it. However, my drives aren’t constantly being hammered so I guess I should be OK right?

Thank you!

[MS Bob 11]

After you switch to AHCI in the BIOS, you have to install the AHCI driver for your hard disk controller. Either MSAHCI or the one your MB chipset manufacturer provides.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

is it possible that one of your 8 hd's doesnt support NCQ and/or AHCI?

you have a SAN attached over eSATA? is that where the 8 drives are or are all 8 in your desktop? are you sure it's a SAN and not a NAS?

[IbSta]

Thanks for the replies. I tried to install the supported drivers from both Intel and Gigabyte but Windows says I already have the most supported driver installed already. I'm sure it's a SAN, I'm looking at the back and no network ports only 2 eSATA connections that plug into the eSATA card I had to install in my PC. I have 8 drivers in my SAN and 8 drives in my PC lol. The SAN works fine regardless of IDE vs. AHCI. It's funny you should mention that JDawg because when I booted up my computer back in IDE mode the 2 drives that had issues show up as SCSI in device manager? Maybe that?s the issue?

Thanks.

[Websnail]

Just had to do this with my own GA-X48T-DQ6 after installing Win 10 as part of a dual boot.

Solution I found was to leave the BIOS in IDE mode... run the Winfixit to deal with an IDE to AHCI changeover and then install the latest GIGABYTE SATA2 RAID Driver as this was likely to include the correct driver needed to complete the update.

Reboot, straight to BIOS to enable AHCI yet again then let it load up into Windows 7

It rebooted a couple of times, grabbed updated drivers for all the drives connected to the Gigabyte ports on the board (not the Intel ones)... From memory it complained about problems, etc... but eventually stabilised itself and settled down.