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Just received a brand new laptop. Wiped the installed Win 7 64 bit and put on a fresh copy on a new SSD. After the fact I realized I should have AHCI mode for performance. So I followed this guide

After rebooting I changed the BIOS from RAID to AHCI mode. Then on boot the system BSODs everytime. I had to switch it back to RAID in order to boot.

Why is it BSOD even after tweaking that registry setting? Is it possible I don't have a chipset driver installed? This is a link to the drivers Dell recommends, but I didn't want to go install a bunch of chipset drivers that I didn't really need. Any advice on what I would need to do in order to properly get ACHI enabled on my machine?

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The BSOD happens because Windows doesn't have the proper driver installed; or is trying to use the wrong driver to read the file system. The difference between your issue and the articles is that in the article, nothing was enabled. Not AHCI, nor RAID. The only way I know around this is to re-install everything, but I am sure there are a few hacks around it.

However, RAID usually gets you the same benefits as AHCI performance wise; so for performance reasons you don't need to switch. (See http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-ahci-and-raid/)

Specifically:

RAID mode in SATA also exposes the same functionality that AHCI does.

And one more source:

Assuming you've got an Intel ICH, there's really no good reason to run in AHCI mode if your system supports RAID mode. Your performance will be identical in RAID vs. AHCI

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/244645-32-ahci-raid

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  • Samsung Magician and various other utilities seem to handle AHCI differently in the UI at least.
    – Shiv
    Commented May 9, 2017 at 5:34

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