GA-P55A-UD7 mobo frustrations

Important Drivers General: Storage Drivers (AHCI/RAID, NVMe and USB)
1

Hello! I just found your website! There is a WEALTH of good stuff here!

This Intel P55 chipset mobo has been quite reliable but I am adding more drives. It is used as a Home Theater computer so lots of storage. I am not using RAID just AHCI. I have off line backup storage.
Since day one I have had a few challenges.

I set the BIOS to AHCI and just install W7x64 on my Intel SSD with out the F6 feature. I assume this uses MS AHCI driver.
I use MS Backup to create a disk image.
Upon restore, it is a crap shot. The mobo usually locks up upon reboot. Sometimes I can get it going again by powering OFF, unplugging, powering on again, going to BIOSS and removing the AHCI setting.
But now I have no AHCI.

I am not sure if Intel RST drivers are the way to go or not. If they are, I could use a recommendation for the best driver version to use.

I am looking for fast access and reliable image save / restore abilities without all the hassles.

Also, as I understand it the max hard disk size is 2TB. Is there a way to mod this to allow larger capacity hard drives?

I am also open to any and all other suggestions.

Thanks!

2

@ Zardoz:
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!

You will get the answer, when you read the start post of >this< thread.

I am not sure, that your problems have been caused by the MS AHCI driver, but you may get a better performance, if you use an appropriate Intel AHCI driver.

Good luck!
Dieter (alias Fernando)

3

Thanks Fernando!

I had read that guide before creating the post. My takeaway is your mod version of 11.2.0.006.

Just wanted to make sure before starting over again. Over 200 updates each time I re-install is frustrating!

Thanks,

Jim (aka Zardoz)

4

Fernando,

Just extracted the .rar. Am I correct in assuming that the x64 Drivers are the F6 disk as well?

5

It seems I am stuck already. During install of W7 Pro x64 when I press F6 none of the drivers are signed so I cannot proceed…

Suggestions?

6

@ Zardoz:

  1. There is no need to load any Intel AHCI driver at the beginning of the Win7 installation, because this OS has a generic MS AHCI driver on board. Once the OS is up, you can install the Intel RST driver you want (even a modded one, when you use the “Have Disk” option).
  2. Due to the security features of the post-XP Operating Systems you cannot get any modded driver installed, when you choose the “Load Driver” option at the beginning of the Win7 installation.
  3. If you want to have an Intel AHCI driver from scratch, I recommend to load either the 64bit Intel RST driver v11.2.0.1006 WHQL or the 64bit Intel RST(e) driver v12.9.4.1000 WHQL.

7

Just a note on MS Backup… It won’t work for what your doing and will always be the reason your transition will fail. The reason for this is the hardware state upon backing up being different than the state when you goto restore. For instance if you made a backup with three hard-drives plugged in at the time, upon doing the restore the system only has two, the hardware is different and the restore will not work. My advice would be to use Acronis to create a backup Tib/image of your OS disk. Then use the Acronis boot CD to recover your OS onto your freshly created array. Just be sure to install the drivers for the storage controller your switching to before the initial backup. That way after you restore the backup to a new RAID array the disks partitions will be sized correctly to reflect the new arrays size, and be smart enough to align it correctly. Hope this helps.