AHCI mode under Win7 ?

for multi-threaded apps, AHCI is the preferred choice. AHCI mode enables (if the OS, drivers, motherboard, BIOS and drives all support it) NCQ, or Native Command Queuing on SATA drives. This is the stuff that SCSI drives have had pretty much all along...they call it TCQ (Tagged Command Queuing) Less wear-and-tear on the drives, and potentially greater performance (benchmarks I've seen have been anywhere from 3% to 20% faster, depending on their bias towards sequential or random I/O patterns.) For a DAW, I'm not sure how much it will buy you, but for a database server or similar task, it's the only way to fly. Do note that it is usually a REALLY bad idea to change from AHCI to IDE or vice versa after the OS has been installed. Scott

I switched my W7 to AHCI to get away from Intel Matrix Storage Controller polling for RAID disks thus introducing latency spikes. So I'm not sure about your idea about "installing the Intel Matrix Manager, so that I can run raid. Thus, I will also have the option of running my drives in AHCI mode." Anyway, the way to do it on W7, assuming your BIOS can handle it, install W7 normally, restart with the install disk still in the reader, switch the BIOS to AHCI, and when the install starts, do a repair and the AHCI drivers will install and be set up correctly. See here: EDIT: This is not for the faint-hearted (or W7 novice), you easily BSOD the machine. Also, under XP it is trickier...

@Cableaddict It's a waste of time to reformat your HDs. AHCI/IDE is about the controller operation, nothing to do with the HD formatting. If you change AHCI<-->IDE after the OS has been installed, you might get into a crash-restart cycle when the OS tries to boot. This is easily amended by turning back to the original option in the BIOS. The problem seems to be that Windows loads only one set of drivers by default, and if you happen to be in the wrong mode on the BIOS side, then Windows will crash when loading. I do remember, however, that there is way around this simply by changing a few registry settings (to make windows load the other set of drivers on the next boot). So you won't have to reinstall the OS. You'll need to google that yourself, but I did manage to do it on my Windows Vista installation a while back.

I don't mean to be difficult or cause any disrespect here, but if I were in your shoes I would pay a LOT of attention to what Fabian (and everyone else so far) has said so far concerning BSOD probability vs. added functionality . You had 2 years of system problems which were so bad you had to scrap the whole thing and start over. Now that you have a fresh, brand new system and a new OS, which you admit you know very little about, why would you want to jump into such a murky proposition?? Maybe just go with the stock install and see how she runs first? Just a suggestion... cliff

A few more thoughts... 1) It's probably easier to revert from AHCI to IDE, rather than the opposite. Meaning that if you install Windows with AHCI, then it should be less trouble to switch to IDE later on in case you have problems. 2) I just noticed you mentioned an SSD in your setup. I am not sure how these benefit from AHCI but I would look into it. It would make sense that AHCI+SSD are a good pair, both being recent technologies. 3) The only real problem I've heard associated with AHCI, is latency spikes with low buffers in ASIO. This argument is a few years old, and I am not sure how it holds today. You could use a tool like the DPC Tester to check for spikes under load. I am running my DAW in AHCI mode with a relatively recent Intel controller (ICH10R I believe). I am not getting spikes at 128 samples buffer. That's on Windows 7 x64, default microsoft drivers.

Cableman... I just now realize, you are thinking IDE vs AHCI... I was thinking AHCI vs IRRT... My reply concerned the latter. If the former is your problem, I say: don't do it. For a new box AHCI (or maybe even IRRT) is the norm, so just install and be happy. On an old box, don't fix it unless it's broken... there are lots of parameters that need to match (BIOS, mobo etc).