SATA, or Serial ATA, technology improved the read/write access speeds of hard drives considerably over the speeds of older EIDE or regular ATA drives. In 2003, Intel and Seagate co-developed and released Native Command Queuing (NCQ) technology that streamlined search and read/write access procedures for data stored on a SATA drive. NCQ uses microprocessors on the hard drive to determine the fastest and most intelligent way to process multiple read/write/search commands. NCQ is part of the ACHI specification, which most modern motherboards support. However, to obtain the speed benefits of NCQ, you must enable it manually, as most motherboards do not enable the feature by default.
Instructions
Determine and Configure Motherboard ACHI Settings
1. Turn off your computer and then restart it. As soon as the computers to starts to reboot, press the "Delete" key or other key used for accessing the BIOS setup menu screen. If you do not which key to press, look for a message on the boot screen. If no such message directing you appears on the boot screen, refer to the user guide or manual for your mainboard or computer.
2. Click the "Advanced," "Advanced Configuration" or "Advanced Settings" BIOS menu link. If your computer's BIOS does not support use of a mouse, use the arrow keys to move the cursor to the appropriate menu heading, and then press "Enter."
3. Scroll to the "SATA Interface," "SATA Controller," "SATA Settings" or other similar menu option. Click the menu option or press the "Enter" key to open the submenu.
4. Change the value for "SATA Mode" to "ACHI." As an alternative, change the "ACHI Mode" to "Enabled." Press the "F10" key or other designated "save settings" key to save the changes to your BIOS and exit the setup utility. Wait for the computer to restart and boot into Windows.
Enable ACHI and NCQ in Windows
5. Click "Start" on the taskbar. Type "regedit" in the Search box, and then press "Enter." If prompted with the "User Account Control" window, click the "Continue" button.
6. Click "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" in the left pane of the Registry Editor window. Navigate to the "System/CurrentControlSet/Services/Msachi" value key under the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" header.
7. Click and highlight the "Start" value entry in the right pane of the Registry Editor. Right-click the entry, and then click "Modify."
8. Enter "0" (without quotes) in the "Value Data" box. Click the "OK" button.
9. Click "File/Exit" on the menu bar to close the Registry Editor. Shut down and restart the computer. After you restart the computer, ACHI and NCQ will be active in Windows.
Tags: press Enter, read write, Registry Editor, boot screen, button Click, Command Queuing