SATA Types: RAID vs AHCI vs IDE?

Question

SATA Types: RAID vs AHCI vs IDE?

Answer 1

You are mixing a few things there so let's clear it up a bit.



RAID (Redundant Array of Insignificant Disks) - This is a configuration of drives that isn't dependent on the type of connection (SATA, IDE, SCSI, etc...). RAID has multiple configuration types but the common home user options tend to be mirroring (cloning two drives) and striping (two drives configured to alternate data write/read between them to balance disk input/output). Other configurations exists, but you can read up on them at a Wikipedia topic if interested.



AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) - Provides an implementation interface to the SATA adapter



IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) - Older interface to hard drives. This was a wide ribbon. This isn't very common on modern systems and was replaced by SATA.



SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) - One of the current interfaces to hard drives (there are others, but most aren't for home consumers). Modern systems usually implement this connection type. There are several revisions and they are all backward compatible

- 1.0 - 1.5 Gbits/sec transfer rate

- 2.0 - 3.0 Gbits/sec transfer rate

- 3.0 - 6.0 Gbits/sec transfer rate



Going with a faster transfer rate will be your better option so making your primary drive a SATA-3 (6.0 Gbits/sec) compatible dirve is the best option. Motherboards will often have older SATA ports as well. Hook drives into the faster ports as your first option, then if you have extra drives, put them on the older standard (SATA-2 or SATA-1) ports. Ideally all your fast access (OS and frequently accessed software) will be on the drive on the SATA-3 port while long term data (photos, music, etc...) are on the older ports.



To answer your last question, the BIOS should control the order the SATA ports are read. Once a drive is detected as connected, the BIOS will look to see if the drive has a bootable partition and attempt to boot it. You shouldn't need to back up just moving the hard drive from one port to another. Now the one thing I did read is that enabling AHCI after install may cause a problem with Vista and Windows 7 since the driver may not load by default if the system wasn't installed with it enabled. I haven't tried doing that myself so I can only go off what I have read. Maybe someone else can confirm the status and/or advantage of switching AHCI.



** Edit **

When you go to setup your new system, you'll be doing a fresh install of the operating system anyway. The installation process writes out the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) so the OS can interact with the hardware. Unless you are replacing your current hardware with nearly identical hardware, you'll need to do a new installation of the OS. You'll want to backup any data before doing the install since recovery would be difficult (and always easier to backup rather than rely on recover software to scan a drive for file parts). My suggestion is to purchase another hard drive (preferably one that supports SATA-3 at 6.0 Gbits/sec) to install the OS onto and mount your current OS drive as a slave to it. As long as your case has slots to mount the drives and you have enough SATA cables (cheap to buy if you don't), you may want to consider this option. I always get real cautious when dealing with data and migrating from the existing drive to a new one is a simple process.



** Edit 2 **

Switching the AHCI may require a reinstall based on what I read, in which case backing up is required. You'll need to install the OS fresh again anyways once you get the new motherboard and CPU so unless you have a compelling reason to switch now, I'd leave the system in the current setup and see what the new motherboard has set.



FYI, your new motherboard may have UEFI instead of BIOS :)

Answer 2

I m fairly sure you re on the wrong "forum" for this type of topic. This forum is meant as a support for Surface-type tablet and Surface Pro-type ultrabook/tablets.



That said,

AHCI - Advanced Host Controller Interface - this is a hardware mechanism that allows the software to communicate with Serial ATA (SATA) devices. It offers features such as hot-plugging and native command queuing (NCQ).



IDE - Integrated Drive Electronics - IDE is basically the "old" version of AHCI without hot-plugging and NCQ. (This is usually used during the Parallel ATA (PATA) era hard disks)



Now. AHCI mode and IDE mode -- what is it? IDE mode is to give you the greatest compatibility with older operating systems. While AHCI is as I mentioned above, modern version of the IDE -- use AHCI mode if you are running recent operating systems (Windows Vista+ and Linux kernel from 2.6.19+). IDE mode will allow you to connect older operating systems to SATA drives.



As I mentioned above, SATA is Serial ATA, and is the replacement for Parallel ATA (PATA) hard drives.



RAID - This is a storage technology where you combine multiple disks into a "single" unit, depending on the mode, there can be RAID-0 through RAID-6, and each with different configurations of the hard drive. I ll just explain the simple examples: RAID-0 which is striping but no parity or mirroring, this means there is no redundancy for data, If there is a failure on one disk, it will cause the data loss of the entire RAID array. Ex: You have 0110 as data to be written, 01 will go on Disk 1, and 10 will go on Disk 2, allowing for faster read/write access to the data.



RAID-1 - This is the opposite of RAID-0, which is mirroring without striping (no parity either). This basically means you have an exact clone of Disk 1 on Disk 2, in case Disk 1 fails.



RAID0+1 does both what RAID 1 and 0 does, that is to say striping (writing data simultaneously to two [or more] drives. plus mirroring in case of failure) the minimum amount of drives required for this type of setup is 4 IDENTICAL drives.



There are also RAID 2, 3, 4, 5 ,6. Which is just more implementation of different configurations of striping/parity/mirroring across drives.



That being said, your RAID mode will allow you for some type of RAID configuration, should you choose to do so.



Supplemental: Many SATA controllers can enable AHCI separately or in conjunction with RAID support. Intel recommends choosing RAID mode on their motherboards, which also enables AHCI, rather than AHCI/SATA mode for maximum flexibility (in case you ever want to build a RAID array), since there are some issues that occurs, usually BSOD, when you choose a different mode once an operating system has already been installed.

Answer 3

Sata Vs Ide

Answer 4

Ide Vs Ahci

Answer 5

This Site Might Help You.



RE:

SATA Types: RAID vs AHCI vs IDE?

Until now, I hadn't known that there are different SATA types, but still I have no clue whats the difference between them. I noticed that my BIOS had them by default set to IDE. I would like to know what SATA type would be best for me:



Like after a month, I'll upgrade my PC and get an...

Answer 6

AHCI is the option for "normal" SATA operation. RAID is a special method of configuring multiple disks to work together (which you aren't using), and IDE is for compatibility with operating systems that don't support SATA.



If you change the type, then you'll have to reinstall whatever OS you have installed (depending on your technical setup, this may or may not require backing everything up. Best to be safe though).

Answer 7

IDE - Integrated Drive Electronics

This refers to the fact that the device has its own controller on board, as opposed to being directly controlled by the CPU. This standard has existed since the early 80s and is still true in this modern era. All hard disks (HDD), solid-state disks (SSD) and optical CD/DVD drives are IDE devices.



SATA - Serial ATA

This is the newest version of the interface for connecting storage devices. It uses a flat 7 pin serial cable. Each channel is directly connected to a single device.



There have been several revisions of the SATA standard:

SATA revision 1 (SATA 1.5Gb/s) - previously known as SATA-1, SATA-I and SATA-150

SATA revision 2 (SATA 3Gb/s) - previously known as SATA-2 and SATA-II

SATA revision 3 (SATA 6Gb/s) - commonly misrefered to as SATA-3





AHCI - Advanced Host Controller Interface

This is a new standard defined by Intel for the operation of SATA host controllers. It is separate from the SATA standard, although it exposes SATA's advanced capabilities (such as hot swapping and native command queuing) such that host systems can utilize them.





RAID - This sets the SATA controller to operate in RAID mode. This is where you would use multiple drives as one single storage 'array'.



ADD:

If you are trying to set up a RAID 0 performance set-up, your user manual will need to be consulted. Typically, you would need to set the affected HDDs to RAID mode in BIOS and then enter the RAID set-up menu (typically a separate BIOS for the RAID controller) and create the logical array there.



Then, after the array is created, you will need to go back into the Motherboard BIOS and set the RAID array as a bootable device.