New Build - DVD/SATA/ACHI Issues

[tedward]

I just built a new system on an ASUS P5Q Deluxe motherboard. I have 2 SATA hard drives & one SATA optical drive: SH-S223F. BIOS is set to ACHI.

Vista Home Premium installed fine, but Windows isnt't usually able to recognize discs that I put in. It reconizes the drive fine, but again, often not the disc itself.

I then tried to install XP Pro, when it start to load it blue screens. If I go in to the BIOS & change it to IDE, all is fine. & yes, I have the F6 drivers.

So I've read enough to know that some optical drives don't play nice with ACHI. I'd really like to leave the BIOS set to ACHI, as I've read it DOES improve hard disc performance. Some options I have are:

1)Switch the SATA optical drive for an IDE.
2) Buy a PCI SATA card.
3) Change the SATA BIOS to IDE.

However, I'm hoping there's a SATA DVD burner that plays nice with ACHI. Is there a diferent brand I can get & use the onboard SATA ports & ACHI?

 

[dasx86]

I run an Abit IP35 Pro, and have a LG SATA dvd burner (GSA-H62.) After moving to Vista (fresh install of OEM SP1) and using AHCI, my system would hang at boot with the SATA dvd drive attached.... sometimes. It was hit or miss. EDIT: Specifically, it would hang after POST, at the moment Windows would boot. To get around it, I would boot without the drive attached, and then hot-plug it in windows.

I picked up this to run my optical drive off of, and have had no issues since.


My experience, for what it's worth.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

You could just turn off AHCI, it's not super great.