關於這點, 根據Serial ATA in the Microsoft Operating System Environment文中提到:
=====================================================
Ataport

Microsoft's approach to ATA controller support has reflected the needs of the industry. The success of this approach is evident in the number of products supported by the parallel ATA driver that comes with Windows.

The consumer storage industry is growing and changing. It is evident from the number of SCSI miniport drivers on ATA controllers, the new emphasis on consumer RAID, and the momentum behind Serial ATA, that a more flexible driver model is needed to accommodate the industry.

The Ataport driver will have the latest ATA/ATAPI command set support. Additionally, it will be able to support both parallel ATA and Serial ATA configurations that include greater than two channels per controller and greater than two storage devices per channel. Finally, Ataport will provide a flexible miniport driver interface for independent hardware vendors (IHVs) to write miniport drivers for Ataport.

With the product introduction of Ataport, two miniports will be introduced. The first is a default miniport driver that will work with the current atapi.sys supported parallel ATA controllers. The second is a new miniport driver that will support the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) Serial ATA controllers.
=======================================================
Native Serial ATA Mode Controller Support in Future Versions of Windows

Because Native Serial ATA mode controllers do not appear or act like parallel ATA controllers, they cannot use the Windows parallel ATA controller drivers, and thus, Windows Server 2003 and previous do not ship with drivers that support Native Serial ATA mode controllers.

Native Serial ATA mode controllers can be made to work with all existing versions of Windows as long as the controllers come with the appropriate drivers. With these drivers, Windows can be installed on and booted from Serial ATA storage devices in the same way many parallel ATA add-on controllers do currently.

When Ataport is introduced in a future version of Windows, Microsoft plans to ship a miniport driver for Ataport that will support AHCI Serial ATA controllers.
=========================================================

可知, SATA的完整功能與驅動程式有關而非Windows版本.

就算功能不完整, 總比模擬P-ATA模式完全沒有SATA功能來的強!

而要有完整的功能, AHCI Serial ATA controllers是否被支援是關鍵.

如前文所述, ICH5/6/7 不支援AHCI, 你的Windows再新也沒用!