IDE vs AHCI

[NomNom]

Not sure if this is a software or a hardware thread, but here it goes.

So I recently installed a program called HDD Regenerator and it comes with this live monitoring thing ok. So one of the things it said was a performance tip stating that I was running my hard drives via IDE and not AHCI, it then recommended me to change this in my BIOS, which I did...

So can anyone please explain to me the difference? The only con I can see is the following:

 

[Chevron]

AHCI mode allows hotswapping of drives and enables Native Command Queuing.

 

[NomNom]

so um, does this increase performance of the drives or does it just allow features like the ones you stated?

 

[Pada]

AHCI definitely improves performance of the SSD drive, but I'm not sure if it would do the same for the HDD.

My Windows Experience Index score dropped from 7.7 to 7.2 when changing from AHCI to IDE.

 

[NomNom]

well mine is still on 5.9, I ran the assessment two times

 

[Gambit]

The windows assessment score only shows the lowest performing device in the machine. So for most people it shows the score of their crappy video card

 

[NomNom]

the 5.9 in my case is the hard drive everything else is 7 something

SSD here I come

 

[Pyro]

NCQ can improve access times when you do funky read/write combinations like when multitasking, but it won't magically make your drive faster.

 

[Valis]

AHCI allows for S.M.A.R.T. monitoring of your drives, which can warn you of impending failure. Also, the NCQ thingy.

 

[dexster]

the 5.9 in my case is the hard drive everything else is 7 something

SSD here I come

Mechanical hard drives will go no higher than 5.9 (unless in RAID) no matter how fast they are so don't worry about it.