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I have been reading some very informative articles on changing over to ACHI from SATA drivers after Windows 7 been installed.

Well, I am trying to switch an Asus M487TD/USB3 board Dual booted with Vista 32bit and Windows 7-64 installed over to AHCI after getting a Corsair Force GT 120 SSD.

Got Win 7 partition all image over to the new SSD and it is now the Boot drive. I completed the registry hack part of the procedure done on both Win 7 and Vista partitions (was not Absolutely sure if that needed to be done but it made sense to do it). Then I went into Win 7 BIOS (SATA port 1) and switched over the controller to AHCI, saved and rebooted, black screen found no HDD went back into BIOS no HDD were detected not even the SATA DVD, changed back to SATA, booted OK went into registry and confirmed that the MSACHI was set to 0.

Anyone have any other ideas as to what went wrong? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated, I just want to get all the performance I paid for.

Alois Mahdal
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HAllenld
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1 Answers1

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This is very difficult to accomplish but is possible. I have achieved this in the past by using an add-on SATA card. Any cheap PCI/PCI-e SATA card will work. I call it a swing install:

  1. Switch motherboard back over to compilable/SATA mode. I say that you’re safe with 2-3 successful reboots in compatible/SATA mode. You may not need that many, but it won’t hurt.
  2. Install the PCI/PCIe SATA controller. (It doesn’t have to be a fancy one.) Make sure the drivers are installed correctly. Leave the OS drive plugged into a motherboard connector. Windows should detect the card without problem.
  3. Reboot two or three times.
  4. Shutdown and install a SATA DVD or sacrificial SATA hard-drive on the add-on SATA card.
  5. Reboot two or three more times, and make sure it is fully accessible in Windows.
  6. Now, shutdown and move your OS drive to the add-on card.
  7. It should boot successfully. Give yourself another 2-3 successful reboots.
  8. Switch the Motherboard SATA controller over to AHCI mode and install your drivers like any for other expansion card.
  9. Two or three more reboots.
  10. Plug your sacrificial SATA drive into a motherboard SATA port, while leaving the OS drive on the add-on SATA card.
  11. Once this drive works, shutdown and move your OS drive back to the motherboard controller.
Synetech
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TheSavo
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