On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 8:22 PM, Dâniel Fraga <fragabr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thu, 8 Apr 2010 20:09:29 -0600 > Robert Hancock <hancockrwd@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> Think you meant sata_nv or something there, forcedeth is the network >> driver :-) In that case that's not really legacy mode though, it's > > Oh yeah, sorry for my confusion ;) sata_nv. ;) > >> some chipset-specific enhanced mode like SWNCQ or ADMA in the NVIDIA >> case, or the newer Silicon Image controllers which support the fancy >> features with an entirely different interface from AHCI. In the case >> of Intel controllers, though, IDE mode is basically the same as a PATA >> controller with no real SATA-specific features (NCQ, 64-bit DMA, >> hotplug, etc.) > > Very interesting and thanks again for the excellent explanation > Robert! > > Ps: I imagine how many people are running their servers or > desktop computers using the legacy PIIX driver, just because the BIOS > setting is wrong (IDE instead of AHCI). In my case I just ignored the > "RAID mode" option because I don't ever use RAID. > > Don't you think it would be nice to add a warning message > when the kernel detects AHCI capable system like ICH10 and the kernel > is misconfigured using the legacy PIIX driver? It could be > something like that: "AHCI capable chipset: use ahci driver instead". We can detect an AHCI-capable Intel chipsets (in most cases anyway), but problem is that a lot of systems with such chipsets, especially laptops, unfortunately have no way to actually put the controller into AHCI mode (no BIOS option for it). We could whine about it, but in a lot of cases there's not much that can be done about it.. Intel chipsets are pretty much the only ones that have the separate modes in the BIOS for AHCI - others like NVIDIA AHCI-compliant controllers support both legacy mode and AHCI in the same device, which is a lot more convenient in some ways.. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
