AHCI and RAID on HP Elite 8100 Business PCs

Limitations

NCQ functionality requires both HBA and hard drive to support it. Non-NCQ capable hard drives will

not see any performance benefits even though the HBA is NCQ capable.

Hot-plugging is not possible in an operating system without an AHCI driver that supports hot-plugging,

such as DOS, Windows 9x, Windows NT4.0, and older versions of Linux.

Changing AHCI to IDE Mode through RepSet

Multiple AHCI systems can be reverted back to IDE mode using the Replicated Setup (RepSet) utility. Rep-

Set allows for system BIOS settings to be replicated and distributed throughout an enterprise.

RepSet can be obtained from the BIOS Tools Softpaq at http://www.hp.com.

The input file, CPQSETUP.TXT, with SATA Emulation set to IDE mode can be obtained in F10 Setup

through the following procedure:

1. Enter F10 Setup of an AHCI system.

2. Change the SATA Emulation from AHCI to IDE mode.

3. In the File menu, select Replicate Setup.

This procedure generates the CPQSETUP.TXT file with all the BIOS settings for the system. The user can

delete all settings except for the SATA Emulation setting. An asterisk by the IDE mode indicates that it is

the current setting.

SATA Emulation

*IDE

RAID

AHCI

Use the CPQSETUP.TXT file as the input file to RepSet.