I've done it before... you probably have to load the SATA AHCI driver for your machine via device manager. See this http://www.prime-expert.com/articles/a11/chan … -windows-xp.php

oeuvre wrote:

I've done it before... you probably have to load the SATA AHCI driver for your machine via device manager. See this http://www.prime-expert.com/articles/a11/chan … -windows-xp.php

I'd read about AHCI before and kind of didn't want to mess with it because if anything goes wrong then I have to re-install everything. I THINK I found the correct driver for my Intel chipset ("Intel(R) 82801IR Intel(R) I/O Controller Hub (ICH9R) SATA Controller found in RAID mode"), but the ReadMe for it is confusing.

Also, this may be a dumb question, but since I've never used AHCI mode before, does it make any changes to the drives that you connect? I currently have the boot drive from another system connected as a secondary drive. I'm using it to transfer over some settings and information to this system, but it will eventually be returned to the other system (which I'm not sure if it has AHCI or not), so I want to keep it pristine to avoid any problems.

It doesn't mess with any drive settings or parametars unless you actually setup a RAID array. The RAID in the bios may also be referring to ACPI, which is the "native" way to use sata drives. The IDE mode might slow down disk operations more than RAID or ACPI, since it is mostly "emulating" an older style interface, needed for some older operating systems.

There is no difference between "RAID mode" with not configured RAID matrix and AHCI.
(RAID mode may enable advance SATA things like "Hot Plug" tho).
Going back to IDE requires enabling IDE driver in system registry and (if necessaary) switching off RAID/AHCI driver.
It is doable, but WinXP wasn't designed to switch between RAID-AHCI-IDE modes easily.
You can try - data will NOT be lost [if you don't format it].
Windows instalation may stop working, even "Safe mode".
That's why you always install Win XP on correct Disk Controller mode from the begining.

Does your MB have two HDD controllers ?
Maybe you plugged HDD to Marvell/Silicon controller instead of Intel (Marvell/Silicon may have lower perfomance than "native" Intel controler) ?

Last thing : 20MB/s is OK for a HDD if it's tranfering 1000+ files that have <10MB* each.
*depends on HDD

agent_x007 wrote:

That's why you always install Win XP on correct Disk Controller mode from the begining.

Unfortunately I didn't even realize that this was something I needed to check. I've only ever installed Windows from scratch once before and it was on a laptop where RAID wasn't an issue.

agent_x007 wrote:

Does your MB have two HDD controllers ?
Maybe you plugged HDD to Marvell/Silicon controller instead of Intel (Marvell/Silicon may have lower perfomance than "native" Intel controler) ?

As far as I know it only has one controller. There's only one listed in Device Manager. The computer is an HP Pavilion a6807c. It originally came with Vista on it according to the label on the side, but as I got it off the curb during bulk trash month, there was no drive in it. I only have an XP installation disc so that's what I used.

agent_x007 wrote:

Last thing : 20MB/s is OK for a HDD if it's tranfering 1000+ files that have <10MB* each.
*depends on HDD

The majority of the files were 30-300MB.

Rekrul wrote:

It works and the drives aren't designated as RAID drives, but copying files to them seems slow.

To them from what? Over the network? From a CD?

I've done this. I would not recommend doing this. I also don't believe it's the cause of your slow transfer times.

SquallStrife wrote:

Rekrul wrote:

It works and the drives aren't designated as RAID drives, but copying files to them seems slow.

To them from what? Over the network? From a CD?

There are currently two SATA drives hooked up internally to the motherboard and I also have an external USB hard drive plugged in. The speed is about the same whether I'm copying from one internal SATA drive to the other, or whether I'm copying from the USB to one of the SATA drives. Copying from the SATA drives to the USB drive is also about the same.

Right now, I'm backing up a bunch of files from my old SATA drive to the new SATA drive, both hooked up internally. It's going at about 5MB/s and estimating that it will take an hour a half to finish. The whole system is acting kind of sluggish even though the process that's copying the files is only peaking at about 5 in CPU usage according to the Task Manager.

1) Go to the Device Manager.
2) "Update" the SATA controller driver to "standard dual-channel PCI IDE controller".
3) Reboot and set the IDE or AHCI mode in BIOS.
WinXp will boot and you can install the correct driver for the selected mode.
Works ok since ICH5R...