Tutorial: Enable SATA AHCI Mode in Windows 7,8,8.1 & 10

[Xylez]

I am sorry to bring an old thread back alive but this caused me to have booting errors. Can't boot back into Windows so I have to reset.

I am running an 850 Evo for my OS X and an 840 for my windows.

I have Mac Pro 5, 1 with an Intel chipset.

Windows 10 was installed, I followed all directions, however I had two "IDE's" under device manager. I removed the first one, which seems like it was the correct one. Followed all the steps to a T, got everything confirmed prior to restart.

Windows won't boot and requires me to do a ctrl - alt - delete. (Did not go into bios and change, was trying to do that on reboot but can't get into bios??) *Disk read error*

Any help?

 

[Xylez]

Update, after installing a fresh new copy of Windows on my Samsung 840, I redid the steps, and still have disk read error.

I'm lost at what I'm doing wrong or what is wrong.

I'm installing Windows 10 using a bootable disk. Did not download any apple support software to install once I installed Windows 10, is that we're I am going wrong?


Second update;

I have a firmware update for my Intel chipset, I download the update utility and everytime I try to install the Chipset, it fails... This is all on a freshly installed Windows, wtf is going on.

3rd update:

Installed apple bootcamp software, dropped my chipset from version 10 to version 9.

Device manager now shows INTEL(R) Family 2 port Serial ATA storage controller 2 - 3a26... instead of the IDE controller

Any idea???

 

[d5aqoëp]

@Xylez

Serial ATA is SATA. Does it say AHCI there?

This tutorial was for iMac or MBPs of Mid 2011. My iMac has been running on AHCI mode since 2012 and it has survived all major Windows updates without any file corruption ever. So I think you are doing something wrong or your hardware is unsupported for the tutorial.

 

[Xylez]

@Xylez

Serial ATA is SATA. Does it say AHCI there?

This tutorial was for iMac or MBPs of Mid 2011. My iMac has been running on AHCI mode since 2012 and it has survived all major Windows updates without any file corruption ever. So I think you are doing something wrong or your hardware is unsupported for the tutorial.

Thanks, no it does not, it switched to SATA after i installed the bootcamp drivers. It was originally what the OP Posted (IDE) and then converted to this after I installed the bootcamp support and restarted. It does not let me install intels latest chipset drivers.

What i find weird is when I try another method to manually change the register, I do not have any of the values that they say to change from 3 to 0.

Example:"
KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\IastorV
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Iastor" are nowhere to be found


When i check system report in my Mac, it shows all the drive functioning under AHCI.

I guess i am not sure what hardware would be unsupported?

Model Name:Mac Pro

Model Identifier:MacPro5,1

Processor Name:6-Core Intel Xeon

Processor Speed:2.93 GHz

I guess I'm not seeing a huge difference between what iMac users are running and what I am running, both intel chipsets, same hard drive...

 

[d5aqoëp]

@Xylez
Did you manage to get the patch running?
I am not sure if your Mac Pro 5,1 is supported under this. I read that most Mac Pros can be booted directly into UEFI mode by pressing some key combination at the time of booting. Under EFI mode, you will have AHCI mode as default and Sleep function will also work. Basically, this patch is not needed.

OP had mentioned, this tutorial works 100% on 2011 iMac and MBP models which have Sandy Bridge CPUs. These iMacs and MBPs cannot run correctly under EFI mode due to missing display and Audio hardware. Display falls on inbuild Intel HD graphics which has poor performance. People are free to try this tutorial out on their other models but do that on Fresh Windows install where there is no user data or important documents. This patch can completely break Windows on unsupported systems. The only way out would be a fresh Windows install.

Apple has custom sensor over their stock hard drives to control fan based on the disk's temperature. No SSDs have such sensor. With the absence of sensor, OSX assumes that the sensor is faulty and ramps up the above Hard Disk fan to full 6000 RPM as a safety feature. Then the iMac gets uncomfortably loud. If you get AHCI mode enabled successfully, installing MAC Fan Control is a must.

 

[superkrups20056]

This patch method looks like it is a great solution for iMacs, as originally posted.

However, if you are using a Mac Pro and your Windows install will be one its own drive (not shared on a drive with OS X), you are better off just doing an EFI installation of Windows onto the blank drive. The EFI installation enables AHCI by default. You won't have to use this patch, and sleep mode will work just fine.

As for your PCIe SATA3 SSDs, I have no personal experience with that. But if this patch indeed broke AHCI with them, perhaps the lack of the patch (native AHCI support) will be compatible with them.

If I replace the CD drive in my 2011 MBP with another SSD and install windows to use the full drive in EFI mode will my Windows

1) Work with audio drivers?
2) Work with the graphics card?
3) Work in sleep mode?

 

[ActionableMango]

If I replace the CD drive in my 2011 MBP with another SSD and install windows to use the full drive in EFI mode will my Windows

1) Work with audio drivers?
2) Work with the graphics card?
3) Work in sleep mode?

Sorry, I don't know the answers to any of your questions. My post that you quoted is about a Mac Pro, not a MacBook Pro.

 

[d5aqoëp]

If I replace the CD drive in my 2011 MBP with another SSD and install windows to use the full drive in EFI mode will my Windows

1) Work with audio drivers?
2) Work with the graphics card?
3) Work in sleep mode?

If you boot into native EFI Mode,
1) Audio will not work.
2) Graphics will be Intel HD
3) Sleep will work.

 

[Lif3mau5]

I am using it on a MAC PRO 3,1 AHCI ENABLED / SLEEP WORKING, Rally I dont know how


What I did:

BOOTCAMP WINDOWS 7 X64

AHCI ENABLER sanke1 tutorial

UPGRADED TO WINDOWS 10 (Clean Upgrade, NOT KEEPING ANYTHING)

AHCI STILL ENABLED & SLEEP WORKING

May this works also on Mac Pro Early 2009 with 5.1?

 

[h9826790]

May this works also on Mac Pro Early 2009 with 5.1?

Yes, it does. And it still works on the latest Win 10 pro insider preview.

 

[Lif3mau5]

Yes, it does. And it still works on the latest Win 10 pro insider preview.

But only in the Optcial CD/DVD-Drive Bay ... and the Speed is horrible - only ~250 MB/s W/R (read & write). The only great thing is the Trim Support ... I thinks is better when I upgrade to a 120 GB Accelsior E2? Does it support Bios with the new Bootcamp Enabler from OWC?

 

[h9826790]

But only in the Optcial CD/DVD-Drive Bay ... and the Speed is horrible - only ~250 MB/s W/R (read & write). The only great thing is the Trim Support ... I thinks is better when I upgrade to a 120 GB Accelsior E2? Does it support Bios with the new Bootcamp Enabler from OWC?

I think it depends on what you use it for. I just get a cheapest unknown brand 120G SSD to speed up the OS and apps loading in Windows (small files read write). 250MB/s is far more than enough. Even PCIe SSD cannot achieve >200MB/s for random 4k read / write. SATA 2 bandwidth is not limiting anything. e.g. The boot time with a SSD installed via a SATA 2 is almost identical to a PCIe SSD. The difference is well within normal error, and actually negligible.

IMO, SSD is not for large file storage. So, the sequential read / write speed is quite irrelevant most of the time. Unless your main workflow is running benchmark, or copying large files to / from SSD. In this case, yes, SATA 2 sucks. (N.B. In real world, the system will use cache, that's far faster than any SSD can do. Benchmark software intentionally disable cache, which should never happen in real world software)

AFAIK, the Accelsior E2 can boot Windows via Dual Boot Enabler. However, IMO, that's a serious overprice under perform SSD. For $199 (the current discounted price), I can get a ~1T SATA SSD already (Sandisk 960GB SSD just $165 on Amazon not long ago), which is as good as the E2 (if not better) for most of the time, including native boot to Windows without any Enabler, have SMART (E2 has NO SMART), have TRIM (I am not 100% sure about this, OWC webpage says nothing about TRIM, but from memory, TRIM is not support on this SSD), better controller (SandForce controller...), 8x storage size (so that I can store everything on it, but not just the OS), no sleep issue......

Anyway, if TRIM is avail on the SSD, you don't need this mod. TRIM is enabled natively on 5,1 (assume you have a reasonable updated Windows that support TRIM) regardless if device manage shows AHCI or not. Lots of software can confirm that TRIM is enabled without this mod.

 

[Lif3mau5]

I think it depends on what you use it for. I just get a cheapest unknown brand 120G SSD to speed up the OS and apps loading in Windows (small files read write). 250MB/s is far more than enough. Even PCIe SSD cannot achieve >200MB/s for random 4k read / write. SATA 2 bandwidth is not limiting anything. e.g. The boot time with a SSD installed via a SATA 2 is almost identical to a PCIe SSD. The difference is well within normal error, and actually negligible.

IMO, SSD is not for large file storage. So, the sequential read / write speed is quite irrelevant most of the time. Unless your main workflow is running benchmark, or copying large files to / from SSD. In this case, yes, SATA 2 sucks.

AFAIK, the Accelsior E2 can boot Windows via Dual Boot Enabler. However, IMO, that's a serious overprice under perform SSD. For $199 (the current discounted price), I can get a ~1T SATA SSD already (Sandisk 960GB SSD just $165 on Amazon not long ago), which is as good as the E2 (if not better) for most of the time, including native boot to Windows without any Enabler, have SMART (E2 has NO SMART), have TRIM (I am not 100% sure about this, OWC webpage says nothing about TRIM, but from memory, TRIM is not support on this SSD), better controller (SandForce controller...), 8x storage size (so that I can store everything on it, but not just the OS), no sleep issue......

Anyway, if TRIM is avail on the SSD, you don't need this mod. TRIM is enabled natively on 5,1 (assume you have a reasonable updated Windows that support TRIM) regardless if device manage shows AHCI or not. Lots of software can confirm that TRIM is enabled without this mod.

Wow very special Thanks for your long & exactly description! I'm really only interested in gaming @ 1360x768 or sometimes 1080p, like The Witcher 3 or CS GO (League Training) this needs a reasonably fast SSD for short charging times and liquid frames per second? For me is Windows the only platform for good gaming performance.

So the Accelsior E2 is only for the dustbin and Trim is also supported with Ide on Bootcamp? Okay with this deal I can live

 

[h9826790]

Wow very special Thanks for your long & exactly description! I'm really only interested in gaming @ 1360x768 or sometimes 1080p, like The Witcher 3 or CS GO (League Training) this needs a reasonably fast SSD for short charging times and liquid frames per second? For me is Windows the only platform for good gaming performance.

So the Accelsior E2 is only for the dustbin and Trim is also supported with Ide on Bootcamp? Okay with this deal I can live

For gaming, any SSD is fine. The bigger the better, you know, a good game like Witcher 3 can easily cost 35GB without any mod. Most of the player still using HDD to store games, so, at this moment, the game manufacture still not heavily optimising the game base on high performance SSD. If a HDD can work well on a game, any SSD can only work better.

The 2 main advantage by using SSD is
1) shorten the loading time
2) avoid "transparent object" in game

Apart from that, SSD doing nothing to FPS.

And yes, Windows is the best high performance gaming platform . Even though I mainly game on console (I love the simplicity and painless gaming exp on console, PS4 Neo, XB1 Scorpio, please come ASAP...), but when I meet a good game, I will play that on Windows again (and again) with 1440P or 4K

Yes, bootcamp will gives you TRIM natively, you can use something like SSD-Z to confirm that. Anyway, TRIM only affect writing performance, for gaming, that's irrelevant. I don't think writing the save file will be a matter even without TRIM

 

[Tesseract]

Just wanted to chime in and say OP's procedure worked for me after doing a fresh install of Windows 10 Anniversary.
For older hardware like mine, I would recommend installing the drivers from Intel Matrix Storage Manager 8.9 (https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/17882/Intel-Matrix-Storage-Manager), as newer drivers (such as the ones included in OP's "AHCI Mode Enable" download) will possibly bsod your Windows startup. Or just leave in the standard AHCI driver in case Windows 10 does some automatic driver install tomfoolery and bsods you from outta nowhere.

Edit: Also, a word of warning - this modification of the MBR will probably mess up your Boot Camp control panel. It will give you an error about permissions or something similar. You can mess around with permissions to at least get the control panel to bring up a window, but you still won't be able to select a startup disk, or single boot to OSX. Just hold down option on boot, or get something like BootChamp on OSX (you will have to disable SIP in OSX safe mode for that one to work though... but that's a story for another time).

Mac Pro 4,1 (2009)
SSD in /dev/disk0 (optical drive bay under dvd drive)

 

[h9826790]

Yeah, I also tried that on my 4,1 with a SATA SSD. It works, but couldn't feel any difference except less stable. So revert back to the original setting.

Anyway, I didn't experence any BSOD, and from memory, I can use bootcamp apps (not 100% sure, I ran chkdsk few times to make sure there is no fault to allow me to run Winclone backup. May be that fix the bootcamp issue as well)

update: the "less stability" seems from something else. As long as I boot Windows from cold start, but not "restart" from MacOS. Stability is more or less the same.

 

[Tesseract]

Well there's your problem. You're using your "feelings."
Here's a benchmark of the exact same setup but with AHCI turned off.

As you can see, a pretty dramatic difference. Random read speed with AHCI off is not any better than a HDD.
But a bigger issue with AHCI off is that TRIM will be disabled. IIRC, there is no reliable way to get trim to work on almost all SSDs with AHCI off.

Edit: Update -
I've been messing around with various different ways to patch the MBR, and trying out different drivers to get the most stable results for my Mac Pro 4,1 and I seem to have found something that works pretty well (for now). Including Boot Camp Control panel giving access to boot blessing.

1. Install Windows 10 Anniversary (DVD) via Boot Camp
2. Install Boot Camp Supplementary drivers via USB key after Win10 install complete
3. Modify registry to turn on AHCI mode (using the same registry keys found in OP's download)
4. Restart Windows
5. Change the "Intel(R) ICH10 Family 4 port... " driver to "Standard SATA AHCI Controller"
6. Save, and RESTART INTO OS X
7. Patch your Bootcamp drive's MBR with Johnsock's patch (patch and instructions here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...a-driver-in-windows-xp-vista-and-win7.760482/)
8. Restart into Windows aaaand done!

Welcome to the wonderful time-consuming hellscape that is trying to customize Apple hardware, right? Crossing my fingers that I don't start losing drives or get unfixable bsods. The only thing that doesn't work right now that used to, is being able to browse HFS drives (mac partitions) natively from windows explorer. But that might be a Win10 Anniversary thing.

 

[h9826790]

Well there's your problem. You're using your "feelings."
Here's a benchmark of the exact same setup but with AHCI turned off.

As you can see, a pretty dramatic difference. Random read speed with AHCI off is not any better than a HDD.
But a bigger issue with AHCI off is that TRIM will be disabled. IIRC, there is no reliable way to get trim to work on almost all SSDs with AHCI off.

Edit: Update -
I've been messing around with various different ways to patch the MBR, and trying out different drivers to get the most stable results for my Mac Pro 4,1 and I seem to have found something that works pretty well (for now). Including Boot Camp Control panel giving access to boot blessing.

1. Install Windows 10 Anniversary (DVD) via Boot Camp
2. Install Boot Camp Supplementary drivers via USB key after Win10 install complete
3. Modify registry to turn on AHCI mode (using the same registry keys found in OP's download)
4. Restart Windows
5. Change the "Intel(R) ICH10 Family 4 port... " driver to "Standard SATA AHCI Controller"
6. Save, and RESTART INTO OS X
7. Patch your Bootcamp drive's MBR with Johnsock's patch (patch and instructions here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...a-driver-in-windows-xp-vista-and-win7.760482/)
8. Restart into Windows aaaand done!

Welcome to the wonderful time-consuming hellscape that is trying to customize Apple hardware, right? Crossing my fingers that I don't start losing drives or get unfixable bsods. The only thing that doesn't work right now that used to, is being able to browse HFS drives (mac partitions) natively from windows explorer. But that might be a Win10 Anniversary thing.

TRIM is definitely working without this patch. All software I ran confirmed that.

I didn't run the risk benchmark. Because no matter what the number said. The most important is if that really improve anything in real world. However, I couldn't experence any improvement at all.

Boot time, feeling the same.

Loading apps/ games, feeling the same.

However, it's less stable. Not really BSOD, but something like occationally UI / desktop freeze for few seconds.

For me, there is no real world improvement but only more trouble. So, go back to the native bootcamp driver.

Anyway, still appreciate your sharing and obviously you did lots of work to improve the situation.

However, on the other hand, I also shared my own experence and point of view. AFAIK, artificial benchmark can be quite meaningless most of the time, because it intentionally disableed cache. It may be very good on benchmarking a particular hardware, but not a good benchmark for the whole system.

And my final experence is more related to the system performance, but not just the SSD. I can take out a timer and benchmark the boot time and games loading time to make my own benchmark method scientific. But I can sure that the difference is less then 1-2 seconds, so, no point to celebrate the improvement (if there is any).

On the other hand. If the random read is really as bad as HDD without this patch, then my boot time and system performance should be same as the poor HDD. However, it isn't. I am sure you know how different the feeling between HDD and SSD is. So, is your SSD running as poor as the HDD before this patch? If yes, I think there is something wrong in your system. If no, then you know how "accurate" that benchmark reflecting the real world.

Or your system already ran at SSD speed, and now another 7x faster as the benchmark suggest? If yes, then obviously I did something wrong, and I should follow your 8 steps to do the patch.

P.S the free version paragon NTFS driver works well in the latest Windows 10. You may consider that rather than wait for Apple's official update.

 

[d5aqoëp]

I am using iMac 21" Mid 2011 model as OP suggested.
Today, I installed macOS Sierra GM 15th Sept build 16A323. Used Bootcamp to create partition for Windows. Since Apple prevents you from installing Windows 10 on this machine, I had to insert my original Windows 7 X64 DVD to trick Sierra to go ahead with partitioning and boot. As soon as my iMac booted, at chime I pressed option button to pause the boot process. This time I ejected my Windows 7 DVD and inserted Windows 10 X64 Anniversary Edition DVD. Then it appeared in the bootmenu. Takes time for it to show up. This allowed me to install Windows 10 as normal on partition marked as Bootcamp. You need to format it using Windows 10 built-in setup wizard.

Once booted into Windows 10, I applied the AHCI patch and rebooted Windows which enabled AHCI Mode. The AHCI drivers in OP's post work perfectly for my iMac 2011 model. Then I went ahead to install ORCA modified bootcamp.msi V6.0.6136. Bootcamp install throws error because it cannot find any bloat drivers to install. But ignore that. Rebooted and bootcamp control panel works flawlessly. No permissions error.

Then I went forward to install Null drivers (For facetime cam), 2 drivers for Apple keyboard, AMD GPU drivers.
Rest of the driver and stuff was taken care of by Windows update.

I am using OWC SSD Thermal sensor cable from here. Now the SSD fan does not spin at full RPM and I do not have to resort to software temp monitoring software.

The only problem is Apple needs to update their HFS drivers for Windows. Right now, the macOS partition is not visible in Windows. There is no free workaround. You have to buy a third party software which enables HFS read/write support. Or else wait for Apple bootcamp package update for Read Only support.

Now to all the nay-sayers of speed improvements: look at the below screenshot:
The true power of AHCI Mode on an iMac mid 2011. Without AHCI mode, the speeds are halved.

To those Mac Pro users, you are running these high speed SSDs in SATA 2 ports as your Mac Pro does not support SATA 3 speeds (Absence of SATA 3 port). Since SATA 2 (3 Gigabits/sec) runs at half the speed of SATA 3 (6 Gigabits/sec), you will see degraded performance no matter what.

iMac from mid 2011 have SATA 3 ports.

 

[h9826790]

I am using iMac 21" Mid 2011 model as OP suggested.
Today, I installed macOS Sierra GM 15th Sept build 16A323. Used Bootcamp to create partition for Windows. Since Apple prevents you from installing Windows 10 on this machine, I had to insert my original Windows 7 X64 DVD to trick Sierra to go ahead with partitioning and boot. As soon as my iMac booted, at chime I pressed option button to pause the boot process. This time I ejected my Windows 7 DVD and inserted Windows 10 X64 Anniversary Edition DVD. Then it appeared in the bootmenu. Takes time for it to show up. This allowed me to install Windows 10 as normal on partition marked as Bootcamp. You need to format it using Windows 10 built-in setup wizard.

Once booted into Windows 10, I applied the AHCI patch and rebooted Windows which enabled AHCI Mode. The AHCI drivers in OP's post work perfectly for my iMac 2011 model. Then I went ahead to install ORCA modified bootcamp.msi V6.0.6136. Bootcamp install throws error because it cannot find any bloat drivers to install. But ignore that. Rebooted and bootcamp control panel works flawlessly. No permissions error.

Then I went forward to install Null drivers (For facetime cam), 2 drivers for Apple keyboard, AMD GPU drivers.
Rest of the driver and stuff was taken care of by Windows update.

I am using OWC SSD Thermal sensor cable from here. Now the SSD fan does not spin at full RPM and I do not have to resort to software temp monitoring software.

The only problem is Apple needs to update their HFS drivers for Windows. Right now, the macOS partition is not visible in Windows. There is no free workaround. You have to buy a third party software which enables HFS read/write support. Or else wait for Apple bootcamp package update for Read Only support.

Now to all the nay-sayers of speed improvements: look at the below screenshot:
The true power of AHCI Mode on an iMac mid 2011. Without AHCI mode, the speeds are halved.

To those Mac Pro users, you are running these high speed SSDs in SATA 2 ports as your Mac Pro does not support SATA 3 speeds (Absence of SATA 3 port). Since SATA 2 (3 Gigabits/sec) runs at half the speed of SATA 3 (6 Gigabits/sec), you will see degraded performance no matter what.

iMac from mid 2011 have SATA 3 ports.

Some little extra info. The Mac Pro just no native SATA 3 port, but it support SATA 3 (bootable) via PCIe slot or even the PCIe SSD like SM951.

 

[joseroddo]

Hi, I have a Mid 2010 27" iMac 11,3 with an Intel i5 at 2,8 GHz, GPU ATI HD5750, SATA II, and recently bought a Samsung EVO 850 with 500 GB.

I already installed bootcamp (I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64 bit) and my system is running fine. However, the Samsung Magician software tells me that AHCI mode is disabled and won't recognize my SATA interface. Anybody knows if this guide will work in my iMac and will I be able to use my GPU without problems?

If I give it a try and fail, how can I restore bootcamp to a previous state?

Thanks in advance.

ps. sorry for my english it is not my first language.

 

[h9826790]

Hi, I have a Mid 2010 27" iMac 11,3 with an Intel i5 at 2,8 GHz, GPU ATI HD5750, SATA II, and recently bought a Samsung EVO 850 with 500 GB.

I already installed bootcamp (I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64 bit) and my system is running fine. However, the Samsung Magician software tells me that AHCI mode is disabled and won't recognize my SATA interface. Anybody knows if this guide will work in my iMac and will I be able to use my GPU without problems?

If I give it a try and fail, how can I restore bootcamp to a previous state?

Thanks in advance.

ps. sorry for my english it is not my first language.

You can backup your whole bootcamp partition to an image file under OSX e.g. via Winclone. Then test whatever you want in Windows. If anything goes wrong, you can simply recover your Windows from the image file (in OSX).

 

[joseroddo]

You can backup your whole bootcamp partition to an image file under OSX e.g. via Winclone. Then test whatever you want in Windows. If anything goes wrong, you can simply recover your Windows from the image file (in OSX).

Thanks for the quick reply. I followed all the steps but in the end got a BSOD after windows try to boot. Maybe it was due to that my IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers show something like this:

Wich is clearly different from what the guide shows. Anyway, I followed the steps and in the second one I didn't know wich ATA Channel to uninstall, picked ATA Channel 1 and continued through the rest of the guide, but BSOD happened, so no success. In any case, I think my SSD is perfoming decently (except for the Random Write IOPS:

In conclusion, I think my iMac just won't handle AHCI mode, and won't bother trying again with ATA Channel 0. Thank you for your help h9826790.

 

[h9826790]

Thanks for the quick reply. I followed all the steps but in the end got a BSOD after windows try to boot. Maybe it was due to that my IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers show something like this:

View attachment 668216

Wich is clearly different from what the guide shows. Anyway, I followed the steps and in the second one I didn't know wich ATA Channel to uninstall, picked ATA Channel 1 and continued through the rest of the guide, but BSOD happened, so no success. In any case, I think my SSD is perfoming decently (except for the Random Write IOPS:

View attachment 668218

In conclusion, I think my iMac just won't handle AHCI mode, and won't bother trying again with ATA Channel 0. Thank you for your help h9826790.

Your RAPID mode is on, you are benchmarking the RAM, not your SSD. Anyway, as long as TRIM is enabled, that means AHCI is working in the background. For true IDE, TRIM will not be avail.

Update: Just find out that TRIM doest NOT require ACHI, there is no direct relation between them.

 

[d5aqoëp]

I have sold my 2011 iMac. So bye bye to this amazing tutorial. It was still working at the time of selling.