is it for 7- series or 8-/9- series ?
For all of them, but it will only be used by the system, if the Intel SATA Controller has been set to "RAID" within the BIOS.
For all of them, but it will only be used by the system, if the Intel SATA Controller has been set to "RAID" within the BIOS.
Hi, Iām slightly lost 
I have Dell laptop Precision M6500, it has PM55 chipset. I have two SSDs in RAID0. There is Intel Matrix Storage Manager 8.9.5. Also, I recently updated Intel Rapid Storage Technology to 13.6.0.1002 ā¦ enabling Write Back cache mode seems to help significantly.
However, Iād like to enable TRIM and after reading relatively lot of posts here, Iām still not sure what to do exactly The BIOS just says it is āDellā. Can you please provide me with some advice?
Thank you!
Jaroslav
@ jardako:
Hello Jaroslav,
welcome at Win-RAID Forum!
For your P55 chipset system with an old MSM RAID ROM module within the BIOS it would have been better to take the "classical" Intel RST driver v11.2.0.1006 WHQL.
If you want to get TRIM activity without your RAID0 array, you have to flash an especially modified BIOS, which contains a TRIM in RAID0 supporting Intel RAID ROM module. The best choice for your system would be the "Universally TRIM modified" Intel RST RAID ROM v11.2.0.1527 with TRIM in RAID0 support. You can get it within the start post of >this< thread.
Good luck!
Dieter (alias Fernando)
Hi Fernando,
thank you for the answer.
Are there some disadvantages when I use the newer RST? The new one allows me to switch on write back cache, which speeds up the "4K write" very significantly. The old one didnāt have this possibility (not 100% sure about the old version now).
.
Thanks. Iāll try it in the evening and write here if it worked 
Best regards,
Jaroslav
None of the latest Intel RST(e) drivers have been designed for P55 chipset systems. Furthermore you will get the best RAID0 performance, if you are using the latest "classical" Intel RST driver v11.2.0.1006 in combination with the matching Intel RAID ROM v11.2.0.1527 (look >here<).
Warning: Donāt try to "downgrade" the Intel RAID driver from your current RST(e) version (using the additional SCSI driver named iaStorF.sys) to a "classical" RST driver (working without iaStorF.sys). You may get an unbootable system after having done that.
Solution: A clean install of the OS and the installation of the "classical" Intel RST driver (or the complete Drivers & Software Set) once the OS is up.
All Intel RST Console versions (incl. v11.2.0.1006) will offer you the same option.
Reinstalling the OS is a bit of hassle. Will it work if I use the current RST and the RAID ROM v.11.2.0.1527? Iāll do performance tests and see how it behaves and possibly reinstall the OS later.
Also, I have PM55, not P55 (mobile chipset). Do I understand correctly that it does not make a difference that has to be taken into account?
Thanks.
J.
Yes, it will work (probably better than with your current MSM RAID ROM v8.x.x.xxxx), but it will be a good idea to install the matching Intel RST driver v11.2.0.1006 after having done a fresh OS installation (whenever you will do it).
Yes, it does not make a difference.
Zitat von Fernando
Yes, it does not make a difference.
Fine. I have another question
The laptop is big and heavyā¦ and I can put 4 SSDs into it! However, the chipset officially support only two drives in RAID. Is there another trick to make it working with three or even four drives?EDIT by Fernando: Quoting format corrected
I donāt know, but I do not really recommend to try that even if it would be possible.
Reasons:
1. You will not get much benefit regarding the performance (a RAID0 array with 3 SSD members will already reach the maximum possible speed).
2. A connection of 2 more SSDs will enhance the power consumption of your laptop enormously. So the storage battery will be empty very soon.
3. The risk of an SSD failure and loss of all data will be doubled.
Thanks. I would like to try it anyway if it was possible
The laptop has only SATA 2. So with two SSDs, I have only 500MB/s. So with 4 SSDs, I could reach 1000MB/s
The laptop is heavy, consuming too much anyway, so I use it more as a desktop. I have these 4 SSDs there already anyway.
Iām not afraid. I use SSDs for about 7 - 8 years, no failure so far. I have double backup.
It woul be really great to have such configuration. Maybe someone will read this in the future and provide some hack ā¦
Hi, Iām sorry, but Iām still lost.
I got the Dell BIOS. Iām able to extract the .hdr file using PhoenixTool (or get the .rom file by calling the Dell .exe file with -writeromfile option). However, cbrom āextracted_fileā /D just hangs and does nothing.
Would you be please so kind and help me? How should I continue?
Attached find the original Dell file.
Thank you!
J.
M6500A10.zip (1.28 MB)
The attached file is corrupt.
Furthermore I need the extracted ROM file and not the complete flash software.
@ jardako:
The usual Award/Phoenix BIOS modding tools like CBROM do not work with Dell BIOSes.
Nevertheless I was able to get all modules extractred from the BIOS file named M6500A10.exe by using andypās PhoenixTool v2.59 (you can get it >here<).
The Intel RAID ROM module v8.9.5.1001 is within the DUMP file named 4B32.ROM.
Since I donāt have any experience with Dell BIOS modding, I cannot give you any further help. Maybe you will get it >here<.
Warning: The flashing procedure by using any modded BIOS is risky, especially with Mobile Systems, whose BIOS recovery options are very limited.
Good luck!
@ all:
Update of the Start post
Changelog:
- new: Intel RST(e) RAID ROM v14.0.0.2198
Notes:
This Intel RAID ROM module has been primarily designed for the upcoming Intel 100-Series Chipset RAID systems.
Thanks to Pacman resp. Station-Drivers for the source package.
Greetings from
Dieter (alias Fernando)
Does it support the old ICH10R? Any info for this ROM? Thanks.
Due to the unified external DeviceID (DEV_2822/282A) all RST/RST(e) Intel RAID ROM module versions are usable with all Intel SATA RAID Controllers from ICH8 R up, but they are not optimized for all of them. Older Intel chipsets like yours may not been fully supported.
The Intel RST(e) RAID drivers and OROM modules of the v13 and v14 devopment trees have been primarily designed by Intel for the latest chipsets from the 7/8-Series up.
Intel has never published special ReadMe files about their released Option ROM modules. So we have to wait until Intel has officially published the first final Intel RST driver version from the v14 development tree.
Hi Fernando,
Great forum and highly valuable information, thanks a lot for sharing. Please feel free to move my message to another more related thread if needed. I have an ASUS P6T SE (AMI bios non-UEFI), with ICH10R intel controller. I have recently bought two 3TB HDDs hoping to set them up in RAID 1, but found out that the old version of the controller firmware (FW) does not support more than 2TB. I spent a couple of hours, reading most of the related stuff here, and decided to give it a try by modding the 0908 BIOS that contain 8.0.0.1038 OROM to 11.2.0.1527 without success (I think this was also reported by other members). The computer gets stuck at the Intel RST boot manager with a black screen and blinking cursor.
1. Could you please point me to how people recover/restore their BIOS ? In my case, it was not going into the BIOS/EZ FLASH (as it happens after the RST boot manager, and it got stuck before that). What I did was I cleared the CMOS/BIOS settings using the jumper on the motherboard which disabled the RAID and then I was able to get into the BIOS and restore the flash to the stock image. Is there a better way ?
2. MMTool did not give me any error when replacing the PCI Option ROM, but it did move around almost all the other objects after that, not sure if that was the cause of the failure. But does that mean that I have enough empty space in the BIOS image ?
3. Another likely cause for the failure is the FW loader of RST not handling the bigger size of the OROM, if that is the case, the loader part should also be changed.
4. I have a pretty good amount of experience in hardware/low level software, but I have never done anything for BIOS, it would be great if you can point me to a few more advanced references, including the following
4.1 Does BIOS run on the main processor (i7 for example) ? I need to know if it is using x86 opcodes in order to disassemble it and know what it is doing.
4.2 It seems BIOS objects are compressed, so it has to be decompressed somewhere, does it use the DDR3 RAM, or it uses some dedicated SRAM in the motherboard ?
4.3 The above issues might be caused by some bugs in the MMTool, is the BIOS structure standard/open source ? Is there any information about its format ?
4.4 Any other information/pointers to AMI non-UEFI BIOSes and Intel RAID controller ROMs is very much appreciated.
Thanks a lot in advance,
@ z258_14:
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!
Yes, it is a wellknown BIOS space problem of some X58 chipset mainboards like yours, which makes it impossible to get any newer and bigger sized Intel RAID ROM module inserted than v10.1.0.1008 (look >here<).
So you probably will be able to replace within the BIOS of your ASUS P6T SE the currently present Intel MSM RAID ROM v8.0.0.1038 by the Intel RST RAID ROM v10.1.0.1008, but even with this much newer Intel RAID ROM version the on-board Intel SATA RAID Controller will not be able to manage your > 2 TB sized RAID Volumes (an Intel RAID ROM v10.5.x.xxxx or higher would be required).
I donāt know any better way.
It is not a space problem of the entire BIOS, but a space problem within the BIOS section, where the Option ROM modules are stored. The AMI MMTool obviously was able to get the 119 KB sized Intel RAID ROM v11.2.0.1527 inserted, but the compression rate of this module was so high, that it couldnāt be correctly loaded while booting your system in RAID mode.
I donāt know, whether this is possible and, if it is, how to do that.
Conclusion: You probably will not be able to get the >2 TB RAID Volumes detected by your X58 chipset system, unless you get from ASUS a completely reorganized BIOS for your P6T SE mainboard, which offers the needed space for ca. 120 KB sized Intel RAID ROM modules.
So I recommend to contact the ASUS Support. AFAIK they have already done this service for other X58 mainboards.
Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)
@z258_14
You should ignore the module relocation in MMTool. It tends to place the uncompressed modules in front and then sort the modules based on size, decreasing. And the BIOS space is not a problem, unless MMTool actually tells you so. The compression is also not important, there are other bigger modules that are compressed and have no problem. There is one compression (custom EFI/Tiano, probably) for each module, not individual settings for each one. Your BIOS file actually has the same order of modules as in MMTool (pointer based), which is not that common from my tests. You can see there is plenty of space between last module (80 - Image Information) and the Extended Boot Block (EBB).
The real issue is in memory allocation, they just didnāt thought of OROMs bigger than 64KB at that time. You need to be a master in assembly and you have three options:
- get a copy of the sources for your BIOS and fix the problem yourself. In my point, the main target is 1B module (System BIOS). It is impossible to fix this just by disassembly and patching, it is equally impossible to get the sources.
- make the memory allocation from the ROM. There is the option of PMM request that can handle memory allocation. But there is not much space in the RAID ROM to do this.
- do what iPXE does, and use a small image to pass the POST and add the RAID ROM as a payload or as a second image linked to the first one. I would say this is the best option from the three. You have iPXE sources and the way in this file, if you can make it work.
But the manufacturer doing it for you is the best solution.