Switch SATA Operation Mode

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 21:38:19 +0000

Modern systems usually offer different SATA Operation Modes such as ATA, AHCI or IRRT.

The AHCI mode offers extra features such as hot swapping and native command queuing.

Many vendors set the SATA Operation Mode to ATA by default because it’s the most compatible mode but there are a few reasons why you might want to change it:

AHCI has a higher performance than ATA.
AHCI is a requirement for the TRIM command.
AHCI is required for self encrypting hard drives

Please note that the IRRT (integrated raid) mode is supposed to support all functionality of AHCI but in my experience it doesn't.

So the question is: how do we switch the SATA Operation Mode from ATA or IRRT to AHCI?

IIRT on Remko's Blog

Switch SATA Operation Mode