Solved Dual boot win 7 and 8: Is AHCI necessary?

[Dave76]

What Intel Matrix Storage or Rapid Storage drivers are you using?

Go to Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, expand and double click on the Intel listings and then the Driver tab.

 

[imeem]

What Intel Matrix Storage or Rapid Storage drivers are you using?

Go to Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, expand and double click on the Intel listings and then the Driver tab.

it says 8.9.0.1023 on windows 7.

On windows 8, I don't think i have the intel matrix storage software.

 

[Dave76]

That's an old Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver, the newer Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers may help with your issue. If you have a SSD then you will definitely need to update these drivers.

If your W8 install doesn't have the Intel RST driver then it will have the default msachi driver. You can update it to the same Intel RST driver.

Update to the Intel RST driver:
Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Version: 11.2.0.1006
Don't install any versions newer than this one, they are known to cause instability.

 

[imeem]

That's an old Intel Matrix Storage Manager driver, the newer Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers may help with your issue. If you have a SSD then you will definitely need to update these drivers.

If your W8 install doesn't have the Intel RST driver then it will have the default msachi driver. You can update it to the same Intel RST driver.

Update to the Intel RST driver:
Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Version: 11.2.0.1006
Don't install any versions newer than this one, they are known to cause instability.

updated and hot-swapping still isn't working properly. but thx for trying to help. I'll just set my bios to AHCI when my HDD fails in a few months and reinstall everything.

 

[Dave76]

It's likely your BIOS can't enable hot swapping in the normal way.

I used this program to hot swap my HDD's before a BIOS update enabled it.
It has been updated recently, so should work for you.

HotSwap!

This software is developed based on the information Knowledge Base Article #10744 - SATA: Hot Plugging Drives under Win2000/XP (Internet Archive) provided by Silicon Image.

It does the same thing as you can remove device from Device Manager but it provides much friendly user interface as you remove the removable device from the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the notification area. It also ensures that all data are written and flushed to the disk before the device to be hot-swapped, so you can use SATA/eSATA drive as a removable device much alike USB/IEEE1394 drive.

 

[imeem]

It's likely your BIOS can't enable hot swapping in the normal way.

I used this program to hot swap my HDD's before a BIOS update enabled it.
It has been updated recently, so should work for you.

HotSwap!

This software is developed based on the information Knowledge Base Article #10744 - SATA: Hot Plugging Drives under Win2000/XP (Internet Archive) provided by Silicon Image.

It does the same thing as you can remove device from Device Manager but it provides much friendly user interface as you remove the removable device from the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the notification area. It also ensures that all data are written and flushed to the disk before the device to be hot-swapped, so you can use SATA/eSATA drive as a removable device much alike USB/IEEE1394 drive.

even with that program, my computer won't detect my external HDD unless I scan for hardware changes.

 

[Dave76]

Did you set it to run as Administrator?

It's probably a BIOS limitation.