HiI'm currently building a new system around a Gigabyte 965P-DS3 mobo and a single Maxtor 6V250F0 300GB 7200rpm SATAII HDD.I'm not building a RAID system, but the SATA section of the bios states that i have the option of either an IDE or AHCI system.Could some one please advise on what's my best option before continuing any further. I'd never heard of AHCI so i done some reading but still slightly unsure which approach to take.Any help much appreciatedRegardsGary

SATA != IDEAHCI = SATAhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AHCIWhat exactly did you read? Just curious. :)Regards,http://www.bremmekamp.com/img/misc/avsim.jpg

Im not a great expert but I faced the same issue. As I understand it AHCI is an Intel spec that improves read write performance by using a technique called native command queuing. You will have to read more about that. I am not sure whether your particular disk supports it.In order to get it to work you need to install the drivers available from Intel on the Gigabyte web site.This causes a chicken and egg situation to arise because when you activate AHCI in the bios the disk can no longer be seen so the AHCI driver will not load.The solution is to temporarily plug the disk into the gigabyte SATA controller and run it in IDE mode. Next activate AHCI in bios on the Intel controller. Next, re-boot and in XP install the AHCI driver when requested. Finally, shut down, plug the disk back into the Intel controller and the reboot. It will now run AHCI.