Summary :

AHCI vs RAID which one is better for you? Many people are vexed about this question, especially those who have more than one storage drive on the computer. If you are also trying to figure it out, this detailed analysis provided by MiniTool will help you make a decision.

AHCI is a drive controller protocol meant for SATA based hard drives and SSD’s (but not exclusively). It was meant to replace the older IDE protocol. If you look at the range of storage drives we have today, you'll notice they're all quite differe. Is it possible to change SATA hard disk mode from IDE to AHCI? Yes, it is quite easy to change sata hard disk mode from ide to ahci / raid in bios. Simply perform the steps listed here and find best solution for how to change sata hard disk mode from ide to ahci windows 10, 8, 7 etc.

In order to improve the performance of the computer, many people intend to add an SSD or HHD to their current computer. Here comes a question. AHCI vs RAID which one should I choose for better performance. Lots of users are troubled by this question.

For example, a user from TechPowerUp Forums raised the same question. For this question, some people think that AHCI mode will give better performance in the SSD setup than RAID. However, some people hold that RAID is more suitable for high-end devices.

I want to have an SSD with my windows on it. I also want 2 extra standard HDDs alongside it in Raid 0 for my steam games etc. What is best or...perhaps the only thing to do then? Should I set up the AHCI mode or RAID on my Windows 10 PC?

There are a variety of answers to the AHCI vs RAID, but a great many users are still tangled in choosing RAID or AHCI. To help you make a wise decision, the following content will provide you with more detailed information than that you see in forums.

What are the differences between 10000 rpm HDD VS. SSD. How to upgrade your HDD to SSD without any data loss? Today’s article will tell you all the answers.

Overview of AHCI

AHCI is short for Advanced Host Controller Interface that is defined by Intel. This operating mode is commonly seen in the newer PCs.

AHCI is a relatively new technology that owns many native functions of the Serial ATA standard interface such as NCQ and hot swapping, which improve the compatibility and performance of your devices.

The specification of AHCI refers to the registry-level interface for a host controller of SATA. Its specification is suitable for software (device driver) designers and hardware designers. AHCI mode provides a standard method to program SATA/AHCI adapters, especially intended for those hardware component designers, system builders, etc.

Now, AHCI mode is supported by many Windows operating systems such as Windows Vista, Linux, and some newer Windows versions. If you are using the Windows 10 operating system on an SSD, you must enable the AHCI mode before the system installation, or your computer will fail to boot with a BSOD error.

You may find the AHCI mode in the BIOS settings of the newer PC. AHCI vs IDE which one is better? The post will discuss the differences between AHCI and IDE.

Overview of RAID

RAID is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. As a data storage virtualization technology, RAID can virtualize multiple independent hard disk drives into one or more arrays. It gets great improvement in the aspects of the performance, reliability, and capacity of your storage devices.

RAID provides redundancy in multiple device environments and speeds up the storage devices especially for HDDs. Like AHCI and IDE, RAID also supports the SATA controllers. To get the advanced storage features for a single disk application, many RAID products allow you to enable AHCI when installing.

There are 2 major types of RAID controllers including software and hardware RAID. Different types of RAID controllers support different RAID levels. Usually, hardware RAID has better performance with the advanced RAID levels than software RAID.

Standard RAID levels include RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 2, RAID 4, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10, etc. Each type of RAD has its own distinctive features. With RAID mode, you will enjoy several common advantages listed as follows:

• Fast transmission rate: One of the biggest advantages is that RAID improves the data transferring rate. This is because using RAID can write and read data from different disks at the same time, which improves the data throughput of the storage system.
• High security: Unlike those average hard disks that don’t include cyclic redundancy check, it boasts fault tolerance through data validation. Built on the basis of hardware fault tolerance, RAID provides higher security.
• Data protection: A proper RAID configuration can enable the array of disks to present themselves to a computer as a single storage device. It’s able to back up data, improve performance, and operate other features automatically.

Right now, you may have an overall understanding of the AHCI and RAID. What’s the difference between AHCI and RAID? RAID vs AHCI which one is better for your device? Let’s keep reading the following content.

mSATA and M.2 hard drive are both popular storage devices on the market. What’s the difference between mSATA and M.2? You can get the answer from the post.

What Is A Standard Sata Ahci Controller

AHCI VS RAID

There is an essential difference between AHCI and RAID. AHCI is an operation mode in the SATA environment. You can enable the AHCI mode in BIOS settings before the installation. RAID is an advanced data storage technology that can enable you to use multiple hard drives for performance enhancement in different configurations.

Apart from this essential difference, other aspects of the RAID vs AHCI are obvious as well.

Development History

Compared with AHCI, RAID has longer development history. The concept of RAID was put forward by David Patterson in the 1970s. RAID 1 (Mirroring) is the first RAID level at the very beginning. After that, other standard RAID levels like RAID 2. RAID 3, RAID 4, and RAID 5 came out one after another.

AHCI emerges in the 2000s and the current version of the specification is 1.3.1. It owns some advanced capabilities of SATA standards such as hot swapping and native command queuing. However, with the development of interface technology, the SATA interface has been superseded by the NVMe interface on modern SSDs little by little.

Impacts on the Performance

The different features between AHCI and RAID mode have a significant impact on the performance of your devices such as motherboard, memory, and storage devices. Based on the demands of lots of users, here we mainly discuss the impact on the performance of HDD and SSD.

AHCI is a programming interface that’s mainly suitable for SATA devices. So, if you are using a SATA SSD or HDD, you can set up the AHCI mode to utilize the advantages of the SATA interface. With the emergency of NVMe, more and more SSDs are designed with the NVMe interface.

Many hardware and SSD manufacturers recommend that AHCI mode can be used for SSD drives. However, according to users’ reports, AHCI mode has little impact on optimizing the performance of SSDs. In many cases, it even shortens the lifespan of your device.

RAID is widely used for HDD and hybrid array data protection. It enables HDDs and SSDs to keep running normally even after the data loss of the devices. RAID is now available for SSD array, but it has little impact on SSD performance improvement. In addition, the type of the RAID controllers (hardware and software-based) and RAID levels have also impact on performance.

To help you make a wise decision, you can use a free tool to measure the performance of your storage devices under RAID and AHCI mode. MiniTool Partition Wizard is a trusted disk management tool that you can use it to measure a disk performance easily.

Besides, this program boasts many other powerful features such as convert MBR to GPT without data loss, upgrade hard drive, resize partition etc. Here you can perform a disk benchmark under the RAID or AHCI separately using this tool.

Step 1. Install MiniTool Partition Wizard on your computer, and then launch the program to get its main interface and click on the Disk Benchmark feature on the top.

Step 2. Select a drive that you want to measure from the drop-down menu and click on the Start button.

Step 3. Then you need to wait a moment to get the disk performance test result. This test includes much important information such as transfer size, sequential reading and writing speed, etc.

Is RAID Better Than AHCI?

AHCI vs RAID mode which one is better? This answer depends on the type of drives. Compared with RAID, AHCI mode is relatively suitable for the SSD drives with the SATA interface. Well, the interface of your SSDs has an impact on the performance.

Generally speaking, RAID is widely used to manage your multiple hard disk drives, which can improve the performance of your computer and provide the fault tolerance features. So, if you are using multiple hard drives, RAID may be a better choice.

Some people want to add an SSD drive on the Windows computer that’s already installed the HDDs under RAID mode. For this situation, it’s not recommended that you convert RAID configuration to AHCI. Once you convert to AHCI, your RAID array might not work any longer, but you can still stipe the multiple drives in Windows.

To sum up, there are 3 major situations about RAID vs AHCI based on your drives.

• If you are using a SATA SSD drive, AHCI may be more suitable than RAID.
• If you are using multiple hard drives, RAID is a better choice.
• If you want to use an SSD plus extra HHDs under RAID mode, it’s recommended that you continue using RAID mode.

In fact, the question “RAID vs AHCI which’s better” is discussed out of the concern for performance. You don’t have to worry the performance will be affected if you are using multiple drives (for example, an SSD plus 2 hard drives) under RAID. No matter you choose RAID or AHCI, you still can manage the multiple drives effectively using professional software.

How to Manage Your Multiple Drives on Windows 10 PC

Some users concern the performance will be affected when adding a new drive. Some other people worry the Windows system won’t boot once convert RAID to AHCI. For these questions, you just need a powerful software to manage the multiple drives.

MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro-Ultimate and Server Edition provides you with effective solutions to manage your RAID partition including copy volume, move/resize volume, format partition, etc. With this tool, you don’t have to worry about the system boot issue and performance. Here we take the copy volume feature for example.

Step 1. Open this program to get its main interface, and then select the volume that you want to copy and click on the Copy Partition feature on the left pane.

Step 2. Then select the target volume that you want a copy to and click the Next to continue.

Step 3. Now, you can specify the destination volume based on your demands. After that, click on Finish to confirm.

Step 4. Click on Apply to execute this operation.

What’s Your Opinion

What’s the difference between AHCI and RAID? I believe that you have a deeper understanding of this topic now. You can choose RAID or AHCI mode based on your actual demands. If you have any questions, please send us an e-mail to [email protected] for help. You are much appreciated to leave your opinions on the comment area.

AHCI VS RAID FAQ

1. Right-click the Start menu and select the Device Manager from the context menu.
2. Expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller section, and then right-click the Standard SATA AHCI Controller and select Update Driver.
3. Select the Search automatically for updated driver software option and Windows 10 will search for the updated driver automatically.

1. Type command prompt in the search box, and right-click the Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
2. Type bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal command and hit Enter.
3. Boot your computer into BIOS and enable the AHCI mode.
4. Enter Safe Mode and reopen Command Prompt. Then run the bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot
5. Restart your computer to execute the change.

1. Press the F2 key once the Startup screen appears to enter the BIOS setup.
2. Navigate to the Configuration > SATA Drives one by one.
3. Change the SATA mode to RAID mode, and then press the F10 key to save this change and exit.

Summary :

AHCI vs IDE mode has been heatedly discussed by lots of people in many forums. Some people suspect that AHCI has better performance, while they are still unclear about the differences between AHCI and IDE mode. You can get a comprehensive analysis from MiniTool.

Here are lots of people discussing some topics about AHCI vs IDE mode in forums. For instance, what is AHCI mode? Why does AHCI exist? AHCI vs IDE which one should I use? Here is a report on the Superuser forum that’s discussing these topics.

I've noticed in the BIOS settings of the newer PCs I own that I can configure the drive controller work either in AHCI. I'm suspecting that AHCI 'performs' better, but I really don't know much about that from a practical standpoint. However, I've also noticed that certain programs (e.g. Ghost 2003) simply don't detect my hard drives if I choose AHCI mode.

To help you make a wise decision, we will compare the AHCI vs IDE in the following context, including their own definition, compatibility, performance, and other related information.

What Is AHCI Mode

AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface), defined by Intel, is an operating mode in the BIOS settings of the newer PCs. It is a newer technology that provides some advanced features to the Serial ATA standard.

AHCI can be used to access the native functions of the SATA interface such as NCQ (Native Command Queuing) and hot plugging, which is beneficial to improve the compatibility and performance of your devices.

Its NCQ feature can optimize the process of controller requesting data from your hard drive. Moreover, the hot-plugging (also called hot swapping) enables you to add or remove devices to the computer system while the computer is running. From the aspect of the number of storage devices per controller can configure, the AHCI configuration mode can support the maximum of 32 devices/ports.

What Is IDE Mode

IDE, short for Integrated Development Environments, is also an operating mode that can enable programmers to consolidate the different aspects of writing the computer program. It is defined by Western Digital. IDE is also commonly called Legacy Parallel ATA emulation.

Under the IDE mode, the programmer can maximize their productivity by combining common activities of writing programs into a single application. The IDE mode is developed with many important features as follows:

• Editing source code: It plays an important role in the writing programs. You can write a program by writing a few lines of code in a blank file.
• Syntax highlighting: It can show the syntax error of the language keywords and structure as well as font effects with distinct colors.
• Debugging: This feature can detect the writing bugs and programs with errors. When a program runs improperly, programmers can use the debugging tool to examine the codes.
• Autocomplete: It can speed up the programming process by automatically detecting what you are going to type next, which saves time on keystrokes.
• Code search: IDE mode can use different types of interfaces for code search. It provides advanced support for programmers to find the function declarations and class, usages, and so forth.
• Coding on the computer: It enables you to code and runs JAVA programs on your computer.

Right now, you may have an overall understanding of AHCI and IDE mode. The following section will focus on the differences between AHCI and IDE.

AHCI vs IDE

In this section, we will talk about the IDE vs AHCI topic from the aspects of their supported operating system, operating modes, compatibility and performance.

Supported Operating System

Compared with IDE mode, AHCI mode supports fewer operating systems. AHCI can work in Windows 7/8, Windows Vista, Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OS Z, eComStation and Solaris 10. However, the IDE mode can work in almost all operating systems.

If your operating system is Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1, or Windows 10, your system drive may encounter some booting issues. If your SATA controllers are not in AHCI mode when installing the OS, the several operating systems won’t configure themselves to load the AHCI driver upon boot.

Especially if you switch the SATA controller to AHCI mode inadvertently after installing the OS in IDE mode, your Windows system may fail to boot with a Blue Screen error. As for this issue, Intel recommends that users change the drive controller to AHCI or RAID before an OS installation.

If you are a Windows 10 user, you can try fixing the booting issue by forcing the correct drivers to reload in Safe Mode. In a word, IDE mode owns better operating system compatibility than AHCI mode.

What Is Sata Ahci Controller

Operating Modes

Apart from the supported operating system, here are some differences between IDE vs AHCI from the aspect of operating modes. With a SATA storage controller, AHCI and IDE are 2 operating modes that enable a hard drive to communicate with the rest of the computer system, but there are some differences.

As you might know, a SATA hard drive can operate in a backward-compatible PATA or IDE mode, a standard AHCI mode, or vendor-specific RAID. Compared with IDE, the AHCI has faster and more available operating mode options.

IDE has only one operating mode available, while AHCI is a newer standard that was developed to be backward-compatible with Legacy Parallel ATA emulation. AHCI offers several operating modes including legacy Parallel ATA (PATA), Standard AHCI mode or vendor-specific RAID. To get more flexibility, Intel recommends using the RAID mode on the motherboard.

Compatibility

The differences between AHCI and IDE are also obvious in the aspect of compatibility. As mentioned in the above information, AHCI is a relatively new standard that supports some new technologies such as native command queuing, NCQ, Hot Plugging, etc. So, you can imagine that AHCI may not be compatible with some old hardware or software.

IDE mode is more suitable for those average computer users. It is considered as the most compatible with some technologies particularly older devices such as hard drives, motherboards, etc. But it also lacks support for newer technologies.

In addition, another key difference between IDE and AHCI is related to the use of SSDs. You are required to enable the AHCI mode in BIOS settings before installing an operating system on SSD. If you install the OS in IDE mode, you may encounter the booting issue.

Performance

Performance is also an important factor to analyze the IDE vs AHCI. Beneficial technological improvement, AHCI has more obvious advantages in the aspect of performance compared with IDE mode. With AHCI mode, your computer can make use of all SATA advantages.

For instance, your computer can enjoy the faster speed of data exchange with HDD and SSD because of the NCQ technology. Once you activate the AHCI mode, the speed of accessing files in storage devices and the overall performance of your computer can be improved correspondently.

Which Is Better IDE or AHCI?

According to the above information, you may have a deep understanding of the difference between IDE and AHCI. So, IDE vs AHCI which one is better? In fact, there is no 100% correct answer because the demands of different users may vary. Despite that, you can still refer to the following suggestions to make a suitable choice.

• If your devices like drives, motherboard, RAM are relatively classic, we recommend that you choose the IDE mode in BIOS settings.
• If you want to get better performance or faster speed of your devices like SSD, the AHCI mode may be a better choice.
• No matter you choose IDE or AHCI mode, you should follow the correct instructions to avoid any booting issue.

After knowing the difference between AHCI and IDE, it’s time to make a choice. From the above information, you may find AHCI has better performance and more operating modes options. That’s why so many people want to choose AHCI mode.

Now, here comes with some problems. How to check the operating mode of your hard drive? How to convert from IDE to AHCI in BIOS safely? Please keep reading.

How to Check the Operating Mode of Your Hard Disk

To enable AHCI mode, you need to check if your operating mode is AHCI or IDE first. Here’s how to do that:

Step 1. Press Win + X keys to open the context menu and select the Device manager option from it.

Step 2. Expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers category, and then you can check the operating mode of your hard disk.

As discussed in the above, the SSD drive can work better by using the AHCI driver. If you find out the hard disk is not in the AHCI mode, you can continue the following part to enable the AHCI mode.

How to Enable AHCI Mode in BIOS?

If your Windows system has already been installed, you can enable the AHCI mode by changing the DWORD value or using Command Prompt to enable AHCI mode. To know detailed steps, you can read this post “2 Ways to Enable AHCI after Windows 10 Installation”.

However, if you enable the AHCI mode after the Windows installation on SSD, your system will fail to boot with a BSOD error. At this time, you may need to reinstall your Windows on the SSD.

Before the reinstallation, we recommend that you back up the drive in advance. Here you can use a professional tool - MiniTool Partition Wizard. It can not only help you copy your hard drive but convert MBR to GPT without data loss, move/resize partition, etc.

Step 1. Connect an external drive to your computer and run the software to open its main interface.

Step 2. Select the hard drive that you want to copy and click on Copy Disk feature on the left pane.

Step 3. Select the external drive that you prepared and click on Next.

Step 4. Select a copy method based on your needs and click Next to go on.

Step 5. Click on Finish in the pop-up window and click Apply to execute this operation.

After backing up the hard drive, you can set up the AHCI mode in BIOS settings again and reinstalling your Windows on the computer. Then you can check if your operating mode has been configured as AHCI through the above method.

Update Standard Sata Ahci Controller

What’s Your Opinion?

Today’s article mainly focuses on discussing the AHCI vs IDE. Bear in mind that the AHCI mode must be enabled before the OS installation on SSD, or your system will fail to boot.

If you have any questions, please send us an e-mail via [email protected]. We also appreciate any ideas left in the comment area.

AHCI vs IDE FAQ

1. Restart your computer and wait for the first startup to appear.
2. Press the Del or F2 keys to enter the Setup
3. Once the BIOS settings appear, navigate to the Setup Default
4. Select the Load Setup Default option and press Enter.

1. Restart your computer and press F2 key after the first screen appearing.
2. Press the Enter key to access the Config.
3. Select the Serial ATA and hit Enter.
4. Then select the IDE compatibility mode under the SATA Controller Mode Option.
5. Save the changes and restart your computer to enter BIOS.

What Is A Sata Ahci Controller

What Is Sata Ahci Controller

1. Microsoft Visual Studio
2. NetBeans
3. IntelliJ IDEA
4. Eclipse
5. Aptana Studio 3
6. Komodo
7. PyCharm
8. RubyMine
9. Xcode