Hello Fernando
First of all let me thank you for your great Forum and help towards us "newbies" of these drivers.
I have some problems of performance on my system and I think there is something about the drivers IDE/RAID/AHCI I am using.
My current HW is this:
MB Asus Sabertooth Z87 - socket 1150 - Bios rev. 2004 of 06/03/2014
Processor Intel Haswell I-7 4770K 3.50 Mhz (model 60 stepping 3)
RAM 2 x 8Gb Corsair DDR3 800 Mhz type CMZ8GX3M1A1600C10
Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 4800 512 MB GDDR5 PCI Express with Catalyst driver ver. 13.1
OS: Windows 7 64 bit SP1 with all the updates installed
I have one Samsung SSD 256 Gb Pro as primary Boot disk (disk C), one Raid 10 Volume (Volume0 of 2 TB) made of 4 HD 1 TB (partitioned as Disk D and E ) and one HD of 1TB non raid member (disk F)
All the HSd are connected to the Intel 6GB SATA ports except the SSD with is connect to AS Media 6 Gb controller of the MB in order to have the AHCI function active because the Intel port are setup as RAID mode (ASmedia driver ver. 1.4.1.000 for 106x SATA controller).
The problem I have is that when I try to access to disk E (the logical partition of the 2TB Raid volume) is sometime "SLOW", as it has to awake the drives from sleeping: the first time I open the Explorer interface to have the list of the drive is takes few seconds then it is quite responsive in the following accesses to the Raid volume.
I create the RAID 10 volume to have the best performance of RAID 0 with the safety of disk mirroring and without the overhead of RAID5 volumes.
But I am a bit disappointed of the performances I am getting right now.
For the RAID "first slow response" problem I have describe and also for the lower performance of SSD (I cannot get more than 399 Mb/s read and 388 MB/sec write speed measured with Magician SW).
In theory I should get something near 500 MB/sec from my SSD connected to a 6GB SATA port.
Can you please help me telling what type of drivers is the best for my MB chipset and RAID 10 configuration mixed with SSD drive ?
I list the system information of Intel Rapid storage console:
===========================
Intel® Rapid Storage Technology enterprise Information
User interface version: 12.0.0.1083
Language: English (United States)
RAID option ROM version: 12.7.0.1936
Driver version: 12.0.0.1082
ISDI version: 12.0.0.1083
Storage System Information
RAID Configuration
Array Name: SATA_Array_0000
Size: 3,815,478 MB
Available space: 9 MB
Number of volumes: 1
Volume member: Volume0
Number of array disks: 4
Array disk: WD-WCAW34873985
Array disk: WD-WCAW35016163
Array disk: WD-WCAW34720040
Array disk: WD-WCAW34743086
Disk data cache: Enabled
Volume name: Volume0
Status: Normal
Type: RAID 10
Size: 1,907,734 MB
System volume: No
Data stripe size: 64 KB
Write-back cache: Off
Initialized: Yes
Parity errors: 0
Blocks with media errors: 0
Physical sector size: 512 Bytes
Logical sector size: 512 Bytes
Hardware Information
Controller name: Intel(R) Desktop/Workstation/Server Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller
Type: SATA
Mode: RAID
Number of SATA ports: 5
Number of volumes: 1
Volume: Volume0
Number of spares: 0
Number of available disks: 1
Rebuild on Hot Plug: Disabled
Manufacturer: 32902
Model number: 10274
Product revision: 5
Direct attached disk: WD-WCAW34873985
Direct attached disk: WD-WCAW35016163
Direct attached disk: WD-WCAW34720040
Direct attached disk: WD-WCATR0765784
Direct attached disk: WD-WCAW34743086
Disk on Controller 0, Port 0
Status: Normal
Type: SATA disk
Location type: Internal
Usage: Array disk
Size: 932 GB
System disk: No
Disk data cache: Enabled
Command queuing: NCQ
SATA transfer rate: 3 Gb/s
Model: WDC WD1003FBYX-01Y7B1
Serial number: WD-WCAW34873985
SCSI device ID: 0
Firmware: 01.01V02
Physical sector size: 512 Bytes
Logical sector size: 512 Bytes
Disk on Controller 0, Port 1
Status: Normal
Type: SATA disk
Location type: Internal
Usage: Array disk
Size: 932 GB
System disk: No
Disk data cache: Enabled
Command queuing: NCQ
SATA transfer rate: 3 Gb/s
Model: WDC WD1003FBYX-01Y7B1
Serial number: WD-WCAW35016163
SCSI device ID: 1
Firmware: 01.01V02
Physical sector size: 512 Bytes
Logical sector size: 512 Bytes
Disk on Controller 0, Port 2
Status: Normal
Type: SATA disk
Location type: Internal
Usage: Array disk
Size: 932 GB
System disk: No
Disk data cache: Enabled
Command queuing: NCQ
SATA transfer rate: 3 Gb/s
Model: WDC WD1003FBYX-01Y7B1
Serial number: WD-WCAW34720040
SCSI device ID: 2
Firmware: 01.01V02
Physical sector size: 512 Bytes
Logical sector size: 512 Bytes
Disk on Controller 0, Port 3
Status: Normal
Type: SATA disk
Location type: Internal
Usage: Available
Size: 932 GB
System disk: No
Disk data cache: Enabled
Command queuing: NCQ
SATA transfer rate: 6 Gb/s
Model: WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0
Serial number: WD-WCATR0765784
SCSI device ID: 3
Firmware: 05.01D05
Physical sector size: 512 Bytes
Logical sector size: 512 Bytes
Disk on Controller 0, Port 4
Status: Normal
Type: SATA disk
Location type: Internal
Usage: Array disk
Size: 932 GB
System disk: No
Disk data cache: Enabled
Command queuing: NCQ
SATA transfer rate: 3 Gb/s
Model: WDC WD1003FBYX-01Y7B1
Serial number: WD-WCAW34743086
SCSI device ID: 4
Firmware: 01.01V02
Physical sector size: 512 Bytes
Logical sector size: 512 Bytes
===============================
Thank you in advance for the help.
Greetings from Italy
SkyEagle
@skyeagle :
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!
Although I doubt, that any of your reported issues are caused by the currently used AHCI or RAID driver version, I would update the Intel RAID ROM/SataDriver modules of the BIOS and the in use Intel RST(e) driver to v12.9.x.xxxx or v13.x.x.xxxx.
1. How to boost your benchmark results:
It was not a good idea to connect the SSD (= system drive with the OS) to an ASMeda SATA port.
Reason: The fastest SATA ports of your Z87 mainboard are the Intel 6G ones, because they are directly connected to your chipset.
Solution: If you want the best possible performance, you should connect the SSD to the first of the Intel SATA 6G ports (port 0).
Although there may not be big performance differences between the RAID and the AHCI mode, I would prefer the AHCI mode for a single SSD as system drive. This would require to backup your important RAID10 data, to break the RAID array and to restore the data onto the non-RAIDed HDDs running in AHCI mode.
Additionally you may have to do a fresh OS installation.
2. How to prevent, that unused drives are going to "sleep" after a certain out of use time:
The following tips are valid for Win8.1, but may be usable for Win7 as well:
Open the "Power Options" and set the system to "High Performance".
Then hit "Change when the computer sleeps" > "Change Advanced Power Settings" > "Hard Disk" > "Turn off Hard Disk …" > Choose the option "Never".
Good luck!
Fernando
Dear Fernando ,
Thank you very much for your very fast reply.
Regarding your answers:
a) which driver you suggest is the best for my chipset and MB with my scenario (SSD and RAID 10) ? Ver. 12.x or 13.x (also because I don’t know if my MB is an Intel chipset 7, 8 or 9 series). Please keep in mind that I still have the opportunity (for compatibility reason) to boot (it is quite rare anyway) to Windows XP Pro SP3 from partition D of my PC. Can I use 2 different version of drivers (example vers. 13.x when I use windows 7 64bit and older one when I boot Windows XP 32bit) without any problems ?
b) I know it should be the best solution to connect the SSD to primary port of Intel chipset BUT I need the RAID 10 volume for speed and safety reson…so…is it possible to have both RAID and AHCI disk on different ports ? I didn’t managed to do this but perhaps there are some special modified drivers by someone… If I use the software mirror engine of windows OS, do you think the performace would be better after I have break up the “HW Intel Raid 10” into 4 HD of 1 TB set at AHCI mode ?
c) Thank you vey much for the advice. I’ll try to modify the setting and let you know. Now the PC were set at “balanced” profile. I modify it disabling the HD sleep…I’ll se the behaviour…
thank againg for the help,
SkyEagle
EDIT by Fernando: Not needed full quoting deleted (to save space and to keep the Forum performance)
You have to find it out yourself, but the differences are only minimal.
Your ASUS SABERTOOTH Z87 mainboard has an Intel Z87 chipset, which belongs to the 8-Series.
Yes, you can and you will have to use different Intel AHCI/RAID driver versions for Win7 and XP. Windows XP is not supported by the Intel AHCI/RAID drivers v12 or v13. The latest Intel RST driver, which can be used with XP, is v11.2.0.1006. Since your Intel Z87 chipset is natively not supported by these older Intel RST drivers, you have to use a modded variant (like the "Universally modded" Intel AHCI driver v11.2.0.1006, which you can grab from >here<.
No. When the Intel SATA Controller has been set to "RAID" (which is precondition for the creation of a RAID array), all Intel SATA ports of your system are running in RAID mode.
Regarding the performance of your HDDs I doubt, that you will realize any performance difference in daily work. Nevertheless you will get lower scores for your connected HDDs while running any synthetic benchmark tool, but it is the SSD, which is much more important for the performance of your system.
Another option would be to buy a second Samsung 840 PRO SSD and to create a RAID0 with both of them. This way you can leave your RAID10 as it is and additionally boost the performance of your system drive, which will be part of the new RAID0 array.