What does this setting [SATA controller mode = IDE] mean?
In this BIOS setting, "IDE" means separate disks attached to the main disk controller will each be shown as one separate disk to the operating system (for example as C: and D:).
will bad things happen if I change it?
Bad things will happen if you change controller mode from IDE to RAID. Backup your data first.
Bad things will probably happen if you change controller mode from IDE to RAID. Unless you first back up your data, then reconfigure BIOS, connect up appropriate drives to appropriate connectors, configure RAID, reinstall OS and restore data.
The spec and manualsays
Storage/RAID
VIA 8237A South Bridge:
*2 x UltraDMA 133/100/66/33
*2 x Serial ATA with RAID 0, 1, JBOD function
JMicron JMB363 SATA controller:
*1 x Internal Serial ATA 3 Gb/s
*1 x External Serial ATA 3 Gb/s (SATA On-the-Go)
*supports RAID 0, 1 & JBOD
"UltraDMA 133/100/66/33" means Parallel ATA (PATA) historically known as just "IDE".
So you have two controllers, each of which controls two SATA connectors and. The main controller also controls two IDE connectors. Each of the IDE connectors supports up to two devices. Since a PC BIOS only allows for two IDE channels I guess the connectors are not fitted on the JMicron card (but the
The BIOS allows for them to be usable)description is "SATA controller mode: [IDE] or [RAID]":
My initial guess was that "IDE" refers to a pair of internal PATA (IDE) connector for the VIA 8237A controller and that "RAID" refers to a pair of internal SATA connectors for the same controller. In that case You could probably only be using one or the other pair of connectors at a time.
I now suspect that in the BIOS description "SATA controller mode: [IDE] or [RAID]",
- by "SATA Controller" they mean the VIA 8237A controller (which the spec implies also controls the PATA channels)
- by IDE they mean non-RAID - the OS sees each drive as a distinct drive (e.g. C: D: etc)
- RAID means you get to choose (elsewhere) between RAID0, RAID1 and JBOD.
- the "JBOD" in the spec probably means "concatenation, where all the physical disks are concatenated and presented as a single disk."
ASUS'/Phoenix's choice of words to describe this in the BIOS is not as clear as it should be.
