I think you misunderstood.
This issue was present before I changed ANY bios settings. The reason I changed bios settings was to try and resolve this... however, changing the SATA setting to anything but what it was when the OS was installed, (AHCI) gave me a BSOD, so I changed it back to ahci -- which is the same as when the OS was installed.
the issue was here before I changed any settings- I'm trying to figure out the cause and then a solution.