you wrote a wonderful post Miguel
looking for NCQ info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Command_Queuing
i found this:
For NCQ to be enabled, it must be supported and turned on in the SATA host bus adapter and in the hard drive itself. The appropriate driver must be loaded into the operating system to enable NCQ on the host bus adapter. Many newer chipsets support the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI), which should allow a generic driver supplied by the operating system to control them and enable NCQ. In fact, newer mainstream Linux kernels support AHCI natively.[5] Unfortunately, Windows XP requires the installation of a vendor-specific driver even if AHCI is present on the host bus adapter because Windows XP was released before Serial ATA was invented. Windows Vista corrects this situation by including a generic AHCI driver.
and last drivers for chipset by intel (downloaded from asus website) include ahci for all intel chips, also for ich9.
I've only to try switching from ide to ahci in bios settings asap