SATA AHCI BIOS / ICH8R updates?

[idata]

Hi there.

I have an older machine running SATA with various Intel messages for SATA BIOS at startup, however it's running rather slow on startup and when booted into one of the two OS's on different drives the other drive disappears.

I've done various searches online and the general suggestion is to update the firmware for the SATA controller as there seems to be a question about it handling larger drives.

There's nothing on the manufacturer's site for an upgrade.

Is this the case? Should I be looking to upgrade the firmware and can I?

Here's the spec:

Dell Dimension 9200

SATA AHCI Intel BIOS v1.02.23

ICH8R Intel Matrix Storage Manager Option Rom 6.0.0.1022

Two drives in non-RAID

250GB - WinXP

1TB - Win7

[idata]

Firmware update for the Intel RAID Rom is done with a system BIOS update and they are limited to what ICH you have and may not get updated.

[idata]

So despite the problem being with the ICH8R I'm looking at buying a new computer to get SATA working correctly since there are no new BIOS updates from the manufacturer? Seriously?