Is it worth reinstalling to enable AHCI on my SSD in order to improve compile performance under Visual Studio?

Question

I am compiling to an SSD connected through SATA using IDE emulation on Windows 7.

Unfortunately, I forgot to enable AHCI when I installed, and though there are ways of performing surgery on Windows to get it to use AHCI after the fact, they do not apply to my specific situation. I would need to wipe and reinstall the OS which is a pain.

Do any of the advantages of AHCI apply to compilation such that they could improve the compile and link time performance of my C++ applications? I am not doing much else in the background (I've disabled indexing of the SSD).

Answer 1

I highly doubt it is worth reinstalling to enable AHCI on your SSD in order to improve compile performance under Visual Studio.

Answer 2

It's worth enabling AHCI, but there is no need to reinstall. Here's how you should do:

• If you're running XP, then install the ACHI driver from the motherboard vendor. For Windows 7 you shouldn't need to install any drivers.

• Add the following 3 lines to an empty text file:

  Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
  [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci]
  "Start"=dword:00000000

• Save the file, in a file with the extension .reg and execute it.

• Reboot and then enable AHCI in the bios.

It works on XP, Vista and Windows 7, but if anything fails, just disable ACHI in the bios and reboot.