Changing from ide to ahci

[emx61193]

I just realized that my hd was being controlled by ide and not achi. I have heard that I would need to back up my comp and then reinstall the os to change it since my hd was formatted for ide. I have and sata3 hd and have it plugging into a gigabytes 6gb/s contter controlled by Marvell 9129. I should keep it with this controller right. And should I try the switch from ide to achi its it really worth the trouble. How would i go about doing it? And if I do do it is there anything else I should make sure that is correct that cannot be changed after installing the os and should I update any drivers in the process?

Another quick question should i partition my hard drive to improve preformance, and could i do this even if everthing is installed on it or does it need to be done as I install and dl items

[sysigy]

Originally Posted by emx61193

I just realized that my hd was being controlled by ide and not achi. I have heard that I would need to back up my comp and then reinstall the os to change it since my hd was formatted for ide. I have and sata3 hd and have it plugging into a gigabytes 6gb/s contter controlled by Marvell 9129. I should keep it with this controller right. And should I try the switch from ide to achi its it really worth the trouble. How would i go about doing it? And if I do do it is there anything else I should make sure that is correct that cannot be changed after installing the os and should I update any drivers in the process?

Yes always do a backup first.

If for whatever reason your HDD doesn't support AHCI or something goes wrong when you switch Windows over to use AHCI after the reboot you might find Windows won't boot.

You don't have to reinstall Windows to switch to AHCI, it's pretty easy to do with a small BIOS setting and Windows Registry change.

Here is a guide

Before doing anything make sure your motherboard and HDD both support AHCI.
At a glance I would hazard a guess that they both do but please check for yourself first.

Originally Posted by emx61193

Another quick question should i partition my hard drive to improve preformance, and could i do this even if everthing is installed on it or does it need to be done as I install and dl items

Partitioning a single drive won't improve performance but it is a preferred practice to help prevent data loss in the scenario of your OS needing to be reinstalled. OS on Partition 0 and data on another. Partitioning can be done after Windows is installed with tools such as Acronis Partition Manager but if you can't get access to a partitioning tool then it will have to be done in the first stages of installing Windows.