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Legacy mode is a software backward-compatibility mechanism intended to allow the SATA controller to run in legacy operating systems which are not SATA-aware or where a driver does not exist to make the operating system SATA-aware.ĪHCI is supported out of the box on Windows Vista and newer versions of Windows, Windows XP does not provide support out of the box. Intel recommends choosing RAID mode on their motherboards (which also enables AHCI) rather than AHCI/SATA mode for maximum flexibility.
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Many SATA controllers offer selectable modes of operation: legacy Parallel ATA emulation, standard AHCI mode, or vendor-specific RAID (which generally enables AHCI in order to take advantage of its capabilities). AHCI is separate from the SATA 3 Gbit/s standard, although it exposes SATA's advanced capabilities (such as hot swapping and native command queuing) such that host systems can utilize them.Īs of October 2010, the current version of the specification is v. AHCI gives software developers and hardware designers a standard method for detecting, configuring, and programming SATA/AHCI adapters.
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The specification describes a system memory structure for computer hardware vendors to exchange data between host system memory and attached storage devices. The Advanced Host Controller Interface ( AHCI) is a technical standard defined by Intel that specifies the operation of Serial ATA (SATA) host bus adapters in a non-implementation-specific manner.
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