Intel RST/RSTe Drivers (latest: v20.2.1.1016/ v9.0.0.2062)

Yes, Samsung NVMe 970PRO is the system C: drive.
However, looking at the BIOS menu, advanced option, NVMe controller option I see NONE NVMe devices installed !!
It is crazy the BIOS contents has been modified by this W10 Intel piece of software !!

Regarding the performance, all the SAMSUNG NVMe drivers versions did offered BETTER performances in the past than this v17.9.0.1007 strange solution.
A set of ANVIL tests done in the past is attached.

ANVIL_970PRO_512GB_01fev19.PNG

ANVIL_970PRO_512GB_02apr19.PNG


ANVIL_970PRO_512GB_02mars19.PNG.jpg

ANVIL_970PRO_512GB_04fev19.PNG.jpg


ANVIL_970PRO_512GB_08fev19.PNG.jpg

@100PIER :
Thanks for your additional report.
Please try the following:
1. Set a Restore Point.
2. Run the Device Manager and do a right-click onto the listed "Intel(R) Chipset SATA/PCIe RST Premium Controller".
3. Choose the options "Properties" > "Driver" > "Restore previously used driver" > "OK".
4. Reboot and look what happens.

@Fernando ,
the proposed scenario does not work, the Restore previously used driver does come back to v17.7 and the Samsung NVMe device is definitively not offered.
Another restore previous from v17.7 goes back to v15.5, and always no longer Samsung device !!

Seems like the samsung nvme driver is the fastest. The speeds were way lower with iRST.

I didn’t see a controller to rollback in my device manager, the only way to revert it for me was to reset the BIOS setting for nvme control.

@djc5166
Yes it does seem the only way to back to a clean and performante situation is to reset the BIOS settings for NVMe control control (for my ASUS Z390 motherboard).
This is totally crazy that iRST software does modify the BIOS settings !!
What is your motherboard model/manufacturer ?

Gigabyte z390 Aorus Master

these new drivers and software makes the same bug if you restart or shutdown you system with build raid0 setup with spinners through intel onboard sata controller. Issue is disks spins down when restart the pc and spin up immediately, which is annoying and not healthy to them. If you shutdown, disks tend to spin down first, then spin up immediately after that and then system shuts down completely. Tried so much different versions of intel drivers and software, no luck for fixing this problem. Also with different versions I also indicated that there is another problem, when idle in winOS, disks in raid massive tend to shut down/park themselves after a short period of time which is not connected to power plan of disk in any way. On amd ryzen system there were none of the above problems with same raid0 setup with spinners. It’s all software problem which is not resolved at all…

@Fernando I hope this post find you well. I need some your expertise again!
I have an ASUS P8CWS motherboard with an Intel E3-1290 V2 processor.
I am running Windows 10 1903.18863.900.
It has an Intel(R) 7 Series/C216 Chipset.
I am currently running 12.8.0.1016 version of Intel RST in AHCI mode. This is the last version provided by ASUS for this mb.
I am also planning a RAID installation.

Here are my questions:
1. Is there any benefit to moving to a newer version of Intel RST, such as v13.1.0.1058 for the RAID installation?
2. Is there any benefit to moving to a newer version if I stay in AHCI mode?
3. How does one tell the difference from the RST and the RST(e) drivers, once they are installed?

Thank you for your time.

@Theonek :
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum!
Which Intel chipset has your system?
If you think, that your spin up/spin down issue is caused by the Intel RST Software, have you ever tried to install just the “pure” Intel RST RAID driver?
By the way - Intel has not optimized their v16 and v17 platform RST drivers for RAID systems. According to my own experiences with Intel RAID0 systems the much older Intel RST drivers are better for users, who want to create an Intel RAID array.
Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

@N602 :
I cannot answer your first 2 questions, because I don’t have a system with an Intel 7-Series chipset. You should find it out yourself.
For users, who are running Win10 as OS, there is no functional difference between the RST and the RST(e) drivers, because the SCSI Filter driver named iaStorF.sys will not be used by modern MS Operating Systems.

Thank you for the information.

@Fernando ,
I am using Z390 chipset, and definetely is driver/software issue, as i have tried different versions, only got a small success of not spin off disks within os and during only on restart not to spin down and then up with very old 12.9 of driver/spftware. But problem with shutting down the entire pc persists with any of drivers, which causes disks to spin down, then spin up again immidiately and after that pc shuts off, it is considred as double shutdown to the disks… And as i mentioned, with amd system, different chipsets, there is no such issue at all, whicj concludes it is an entirely software/driver problem. Tried everything above this 12.9 without any luck, only turning off disks during operating in os was able to manage, but annoying problem with restart and shut down exists… What do you recommend?

@Theonek :
Since there are not many Intel chipset system users, who have reported about unwanted disk drive spin-up/spin-down problems, and a replacement of the in-use Intel AHCI driver by another version obviously doesn’t help, I suspect another source of your issue: Intel’s Management Engine.
This is what I recommend to do:
1. Go >here< and download the matching Intel CSME System Tools package, which matches your Intel system and run the MEInfo and MEManuf tools with the suffix " -verbose".
2. If the Intel ME system Tools should not find any issue, it may help to disable the Hibernation feature by running the command “powercfg.exe /hibernate off”.
Please report here about the results you got.

@Theonek
In theory, disks, if not used, go into power saving mode, i.e. the heads stop and park, but when you turn off the computer, the disks spin up again, maybe something is written on them, and they turn off. It seems so, if I’m wrong, then they will correct me.

P.S. I remember there was a problem with certain hard disks, they constantly clicked their heads, and this seemed to be connected just with the drivers for Intel chipsets, in particular the z77. It happened just because of the old hard drives that did not know how to manage power. It was tin!

ok, got some test results which don’t completely understand, but here they are. meinfo just provides some sort of pc info and status, which shows no errors or whatsever, just a lot of disabled functions. memanuf ran few tetst, 6 of them passed w/o warning, only one got and says mismatch between memanuf bist version and fw bist version, which I guess I didn’t hit the very correct version for my chipset. and disbled hibernation in any point.

@Fernando

17.9.1.1009

@Fernando
new RST 17.9.1.1009 here from Intel, https://downloadcenter.intel.com/de/download/29647

@all:
Update of the start post
Changelog:

  • new:
    • 64bit Intel RST AHCI/RAID drivers v17.9.1.1009 WHQL for Win8-10 x64 dated 06/02/2020
    • Intel RST AHCI & RAID Drivers & Software Set v17.9.1.1009 for Win8-10 x64 dated 06/20/2020
Thanks to westlake and morpheus67 for the links.

Enjoy it!
Dieter (alias Fernando)

Im using msi h110m pro-d and installed v17.9.1.1009 using 300 series ahci driver. In terms of stability it obliterates everything ive tested. Its just so dumb that the most stable driver does not even support h110. Can you make signature for it and mod?

@podkaracz :

To whom did you address this request?

@Fernando ,
Using v17.9.1.1009 on a Z390 PC with Samsung NVMe SSDs (system and data) go to Samsung NVMe drivers disappear definitively from the W10 system.
When trying to install Samsung NVMe driver again we get the error message that Samsung SSDs are ‘deconnected’.
They are handled in fact by Intel v17.9.1.1009 driver definitively without no chance to get handled back by Samsung proprietary NVMe drivers.
This irreversible situation starterd with Intel v17.9.xx branch, with any previous Intel branch a ‘normal’ coexistence between Intel drivers and Samsung drivers was possible.
I do ignore why this ennuyous situation because downgraded performances can be measured with ANVIL scores, (but not really perceptible for the user).