Enabling AHCI on Win2K - will it work?

[duebel13]

My mobo is an ASRock AliveDual-eSata2 which has two pairs of SATA connectors. One SATA pair is supported by NVidia nForce3 250 south bridge chipset, the other SATA2 pair is supported by JMicron JMB363 chipset.

Has anyone ever managed to get SATA hot swap actually working on one or the other of these under Win2K? I understand that ASRock advertizes hot plug capabilities for this mobo but that doesn't mean that much to me - what are your experiences? Should I prefer the NVidia or the JMicron chipset?

Currently, the drives are running in IDE mode so that of course all the AHCI features like NCQ and hot swap are not supported. Provided that I a) install the drivers, b) activate driver start in Windows Registry, and c) change BIOS setting to AHCI mode, will this work? Or am I just about to open a can or worms?

I've read a lot about problems when switching from IDE to AHCI mode and would be happy to know in advance wether my goal is within reach and not just an illusion.

-Martin

Don't know if it makes a difference but my system is equipped with 4 GB RAM and PAE is enabled. I have no plans to use any RAID, just plain AHCI.

[duebel13]

Perhaps I got no replies as the question was misleading - actually enabling AHCI is just a matter of changing a BIOS setting. The real question, of course, was: Enabling hot plugging for SATA disks on Win2K - will it work? The answer is: Yes, it does.

You have to use the SATA II JMicron JMB363 chipset as the BIOS offers only RAID / non-RAID settings for the SATA I NVidia chipset. These are the steps which I did:

1) Set SATAII Bios setting to AHCI (only do this if your boot disk is connected to the NVidia chipset or you'll have to install the driver first and change the registry)

2) Download + install JMB36X_WinDrv_R1.17.55_WHQL_eSATA.zip from JMicron site;

note that this properly installs under Win2K even though only labeled for WinXP/Vista;

there is a delay of 30-60 seconds after starting setup.exe - be patient and wait

3) Restart Windows when setup asks to do so

4) Restart Windows a 2nd time when you get the message that device has been installed and needs reboot

Both my external Seagate FreeAgent as well as the Samsung drive in SATA Mobile Rack are hot pluggable now, see attached screenshot. Works like a charm. Note that the removable devices are labeled as SCSI disks.

I am posting this here to let you know that Win2k is still alive and kicking for me. Love this OS. :-)

-Martin

[Phenomic]

You just need to download the chipset/SATA drivers from NVIDIA.

[pointertovoid]

Grüssdi!

I could hotswap Sata disks on a SiI3114 host with W2k. Maybe it works on your host as well.

Plugging just runs fine. Unplugging doesn't because the disks are fixed, so Windows doesn't propose to eject. Pulling the connector without "Eject" would be a real and serious risk for the data, even though it goes fine "often".

I see you use the Disk Manager for it, which is less than convenient, especially if you run a non-administrator session, or if less skilled people are to use the computer.

Fortunately, a programmer has written

HotSwap!

which just adds an "Eject" icon in the taskbar, this one working on fixed disks as well.

It's there http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/index_enu.htm

v2.0.0.0 is the latest intended for W2k, there http://mt-naka.com/hotswap/file/HotSwap!%202.0.0.0.ZIP

the first version that proposes to spin-down the disk before ejecting is v4.0.0.0 which refuses to install on W2k.