[ How To ] Enable AHCI on Intel, Fix the Orange External Drive Issue and Enable Writing to NTFS Volumes

[FishCow]

Hi all,

This is probably of more use to Mac people building a Hackintosh system.

If you, like me, initially installed XP with default IDE mode enabled in your BIOS and wish to switch to AHCI without reinstalling Windows, then this is for you.

I'm using OS X 10.5.5 and XP SP3.

 

Note - after you complete the first part and get AHCI up and running - back on the Mac side, your SATA drives will default to those Orange "External Drive" icons - which can be fixed. OS X will still see the drives as External (and bonus - ejectable) but they will be all pretty again.

 

Also - to make things easier, I recommend installing MacFuse 1.7 with the NTFS-3G package to enable you to write directly to your Windows volume.

 

PART ONE

How to enable AHCI/RAID mode without reinstalling windows (ICH8/ICH8R/ICH9/ICH9R)

 

The easiest method I found involves downloading and installing just two files.

* Taken from gLk*zaP's post at HEXUS *

 

1. The Drivers - IATA85ENU.exe

2. Pre edited REG file. - ICH9R-AHCI.reg

 

1. Go to Start, Run, IATA85ENU.exe -a -a

This will appear to run as normal setup, but only extracts the needed files to \Program Files\Intel\Intel Matrix Storage Manager\Driver

 

2. Copy the iaStor.sys from there to \Windows\System32\Drivers\

 

Note: For 64-bit Windows versions, choose the iaStor.sys from \Driver64\ instead of \Driver\.

 

3. Run the REG file by double clicking on it and just confirm to install the reg entry.

 

4. Reboot and go straight to the BIOS setup.

5. Change your SATA controller method from IDE to AHCI

6. Save and boot into windows

7. Cancel out of the hardware wizard that pops up

8. Install the IATA85ENU.exe again without the arguments - this time it installs for real.

 

That's it for part one.

 

PART TWO

 

Boot into OSX and see the vomity Orange External Drive icons (bletch)

Yeah, O.K - it's just cosmetics, but I like my Mac to look like a bought one

 

… So with the latest "Electro-Plastidial" technology.

Taken from Digital:Parode

 

Note - you will need Developer Tools installed (to use SetFile) and it must be in your path.

You need to have Admin access.

 

To quickly fix the OS X volume - do this:

 

Open a terminal and copy either the default internal drive icon (or any icon of your choice)

Following are the commands with the path to the default icon

 

sudo cp -f /System/Library/Extensions/IOStorageFamily.kext/Contents/Resources/Internal.icns  /.VolumeIcon.icns

sudo SetFile -a C /

sudo killall Finder

 

And there you have it - OS X defaulty Icon goodness.

 

Note the path to .VolumeIcon.icns and the following SetFile command is your HDD Root with is usually /

 

for other writable volumes the path will be:

/volumes/NameOfYourHDD/

 

Note - for all the terminal stuff - you can just type either sudo -s or sudo bash so you only get the one password prompt

 

Extra Leopard cons can be found in:

/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder/Contents/Resources/

 

And other places I'm sure

 

PART THREE

Custom icons for NTFS Volumes

 

For me, by far the easiest way is to install MacFUSE 1.7 and the NTFS-3G package.

 

Then once those are installed - just rinse and repeat the above terminal commands for the NTFS volumes you wish to iconify.

 

If you don't want to install MacFUSE - then you will have to do the USB Flash drive shuffle method.

You can google that one.

 

The benefit of using the .VolumeIcon.icns method is that your drive icon will look nice at any size - including the shrunken icons in the Finder's sidebar and the 512x512 goodness in CoverFow mode.

 

OK - well hope that's useful.

Thanks to the Guru Ninja types who discovered this stuff.