So, take this with a grain of salt, your mileage may very, and don’t blame me if you break your pc.
I’ve got a Zotac ad04 with windows 8.1 pro on it hooked up to a TV via hdmi. It’s got an Intel X2 ssd with the latest firmware and Intel control center installed. It also has 8th ram.
A couple days ago, I got pissed at its poor performance and decided to put android x86 4.2 on it. Prior to this I wanted to update the bios, so I kept windows to do that.
After the successful update, I went into the bios to check some things and set the boot device to a USB stick. I noticed ahci was not on, so I turned it on. Then, just for giggles, I restarted back into Windows. It worked. I was expecting a bsod or driver failure or freeze. I hit ctrl alt del and logged in fine. The performance was 10 times better as well. Go figure.
TLDR: you can switch from ide to ahci in bios if you have Windows 8.1 and not have to reload the os or do anything at all really. Ymmv. Dbmiybypc.
