No offense, I wouldn't touch Microsoft's AHCI drivers with a 10 foot pole. They have a known issue dealing w/ drive timeouts. (Most likely will be solved and put in Win 7 SP1 and Vista SP3)
Also, updating drive microcode is NOT as easy as it sounds. It's very dependent on your southbridge chipset (ICH*/PCH* for Intel, MCP* for Nvidia, SB* for AMD, and some VIA in Acer/low budget OEM computers), storage mode (*IDE/*AHCI/RAID), and sata port (I've personally found that some sata ports over 3 [ports start at 0, so realistically it's "over port 4"] are not detected in some DOS HDD tools).
Lots of variables are in play. I bet it's these "enhanced/compatible" IDE modes that are causing havoc on the drives. Some BIOS just plain suck, period.
Edit: I'd also recommend to update your motherboard's BIOS before you update any of your (hard) drives' microcodes/firmware.
Also, updating drive microcode is NOT as easy as it sounds. It's very dependent on your southbridge chipset (ICH*/PCH* for Intel, MCP* for Nvidia, SB* for AMD, and some VIA in Acer/low budget OEM computers), storage mode (*IDE/*AHCI/RAID), and sata port (I've personally found that some sata ports over 3 [ports start at 0, so realistically it's "over port 4"] are not detected in some DOS HDD tools).
Lots of variables are in play. I bet it's these "enhanced/compatible" IDE modes that are causing havoc on the drives. Some BIOS just plain suck, period.
No offense, I wouldn't touch Microsoft's AHCI drivers with a 10 foot pole. They have a known issue dealing w/ drive timeouts. (Most likely will be solved and put in Win 7 SP1 and Vista SP3)
Also, updating drive microcode/firmware is NOT as easy as it sounds. It's very dependent on your southbridge chipset (ICH*/PCH* for Intel, MCP* for Nvidia, SB* for AMD, and some VIA in Acer/low budget OEM computers), storage mode (*IDE/*AHCI/RAID), and sata port (I've personally found that some sata ports over 3 [ports start at 0, so realistically it's "over port 4"] are not detected in some DOS HDD tools).
Lots of variables are in play. I bet it's these "enhanced/compatible" IDE modes that are causing havoc on the drives. Some BIOS just plain suck, period.
Edit: I'd also recommend to update your motherboard's BIOS before you update any of your (hard) drives' microcodes/firmware.
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