Hot Spare with Z87, Intel RSTe?

Important Drivers Specific: Intel AHCI/RAID Drivers
1

Hi,

I’m trying to figure out whether I can have a hot spare with RST. I cannot find “hot spare” in Intel’s official documentation but a google search showed that “hot spare” is a feature of RSTe.

Does anyone know whether RSTe can be used with a z87 chipset (Asrock z87 extreme6 mobo).

Are there any advantages to using RST instead of RSTe?

My target application is either Raid 1 or Raid 10 on a photo processing workstation (large files, data redundancy and easy recovery is critical).

Thanks!

2

@ all:
For those of you, who do not know what "Hot Spare" is, here is the explanation done by Wikipedia:




@ jonnyz2:
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!

Please read the chapter 5.4 of >this< document delivered by Intel. Furthermore I found >this< discussion at Intel’s Support Community.

AFAIK all actual Intel chipsets are compatible with Intel’s RSTe drivers v3.x.x.xxxx, if the related HadwareIDs have been added to the INF file, but I doubt, that the use of an Intel RSTe driver will give you the special "Enterprise" features like "Hot Spare".

Usually the RST drivers will give your RAID system a better performance.

Regards
Fernando

3

Thanks for your quick response.

Also, thanks for the links. Both links refer to Linux versions of RSTe. I will be using Windows 8.1 for the machine in question.

I did find Intel documentation which referred to RSTe, on server machines, as capable of supporting a hot spare. The document only referred to certain Intel Mobos with no reference to other chipsets or non intel mobos.

I looked through both the RSTe web page and a lot of RSTe docs and none of them listed chipset compatibility for RSTe. Oddly, the RST web page clearly lists chipset compatibility.



I’m not sure I understand the point you are making about RSTe driver being usable but then not being able to support hot spare. Certainly the software manual indicates RSTe can support hot spares. Is your point that the driver might work but that the full software capability may not actually be available? Please explain further, thanks!

4

Looking at another doc from Intel in detail, it appears that both a special BIOS capability is required and RSTe is made to work with the C600 controller chip only.

So, I don’t think using the drivers on a Z87 mobo is going to give me the hot spare capability I’d like.

If anyone knows, please correct me if that is not the case.

Thanks!

5

@ jonnyz2:
The functionality of the RST drivers from v11.5.x.xxxx up is rather similar to the functionality of the RST drivers v3.x.x.xxxx, because both driver series are able to address the HDDs/SSDs as SCSI devices by using an additional SCSI filter driver.
So it was not a big surprise for me, that I was able to successfully replace the RST driver of my Z68 and Z77 Chipset systems by an RSTe driver version.
By the way: Many Intel X79 Chipset RAID users prefer to use a modded RST(e) driver v12.x.x.xxxx instead of the original RSTe v3.x.x.xxxx one, because they get better benchmark results.

Zitat von jonnyz2 im Beitrag #3

Is your point that the driver might work but that the full software capability may not actually be available?


Yes, that is what I wanted to say. It seems rather unlikely for me, that the use of an RSTe driver instead of an RST one will give an Intel 8-Series Chipset SATA RAID Controller the capability to support all RST "Enterprise Edition" features.