P5LD2 - AHCI versus IDE Mode for SATA?

(Reposting this, as a check of Google Groups reveals that it never made it
out of my news host)

I have three hard disks in my P5LD2-based system - a SATA 250GB as the boot
drive, and two older PATA drives connected to the primary ITE IDE port.

In the BIOS I noticed that the default mode for the SATA controller is IDE
mode. I'm not running RAID, so I set it to AHCI mode as that is described
by the BIOS as a "native" SATA mode.

My question is, though, is there any advantage in running the controller as
AHCI? Or any disadvantage? And what about the other options that appear on
that BIOS page when AHCI is enabled (defaulting to off)?

I found a fair bit of technical detail about AHCI on Intel's site, but I'm
no closer to figuring out what's actually good about it :-)

I'm not running RAID, by the way. Single SATA boot drive only.

"Anthony Horan" wrote in message
...

My question is, though, is there any advantage in running the controller
as
AHCI? Or any disadvantage? And what about the other options that appear on
that BIOS page when AHCI is enabled (defaulting to off)?

AHCI - full SATA2 and NCQ support.
Remember - AHCI driver is required for Windows setup (F6 from floppy).

--
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