Modded Intel AHCI and RAID Drivers (digitally signed)

Important Drivers Specific: Intel AHCI/RAID Drivers
1

@ users with an Intel AHCI/RAID system and an Intel SATA AHCI/RAID Controller from ICH7 up, which is not supported by any or by the actual original Intel AHCI/RAID drivers:

The problems:

  1. Although the actual Intel AHCI and RAID drivers are running fine with nearly all Intel Southbridges from ICH7R/M up, the installation fails for systems with various Intel SATA AHCI/RAID Controllers, because Intel didn’t write the needed HardwareIDs into the related information file (with the suffix .INF). This is the reason why the latest Intel AHCI drivers cannot be installed onto AHCI systems with an ICH8R, ICH8M, ICH9R or ICH10R Southbridge and the Intel RAID drivers of the v11 and v12 series cannot be installed onto X79 RAID systems.
  2. Some manufacturers of computers, mainboards and notebooks wanted to save money and integrated instead of the fully functional Intel ICH8R/ICH8M, ICH9R/ICH9M or ICH10R SATA Controller Chips the cheaper, but somehow "castrated" ICH8, ICH9 or ICH10 revisions. Although many of these systems without a letter behind the "ICH" do support the AHCI standard features and have a BIOS with the option to enable the AHCI mode, the owners are not able to get any original Intel AHCI driver installed or integrated into the Windows image. Obviously Intel doesn’t want to support these low-priced AHCI Controller revisions.

The solution
To make even the newest Intel AHCI and RAID drivers installable (and hopefully usable) for nearly all owners of an AHCI or RAID capable Intel chipset system, I have customized the related INF files by adding the missing HardwareIDs. This modification doesn’t affect the real AHCI or RAID driver named iaStor.sys resp. iaStorA.sys itself, but just the associated information files with the suffix .INF and for XP compatible drivers additionally the text file named TXTSETUP.OEM, which is absolutely needed for the XP installation onto any AHCI or RAID system. That is the reason why the "driver modification" doesn’t have any negative impact on the function of the absolutely untouched Intel AHCI and RAID drivers,

Relevance of the driver’s "Digital Signature"
The latest Windows Operating Systems from Win8 up have a feature named "Driver Signature Enforcement", which does not allow to get any driver installed, which has no valid digital signature. Since any modification of the associated INF file automaticly breaks the digital signature of the driver, there is only one way to get a "modded" driver installed onto Win8/8.1/10 without the need of disabling the automaticly active "Driver Signature Enforcement": The modded driver has to be digitally signed by a trustworthy person or Company.
Notes:
  • All modded 32/64bit Intel AHCI/RAID drivers, which I am offering here, have been digitally signed according to mrces2’s guide (not available for the public) by using the extremely helpful ModDriverSignTool, which had been written by our Forum member Zwulf for this purpose. Big thanks to them both!
    Consequence: It should be possible to get these drivers installed without any problems (no disabling of the "Driver Signature Enforcement" required)!
  • Nevertheless you may get the message while trying to get any "mod+signed" driver installed, that "the best driver is already running". This always will happen, when you want to replace
    a) a WHQL certified driver or
    b) a newer driver by an older one.
    Solution: Force the installation of the "mod+signed" drivers by using the "Have Disk" button.

How to benefit from the digital signature of these drivers:
To get full benefit from the driver’s digital signature it is necessary to import the related Certificate and to declare it as trustworthy.
Important: This procedure has to be done only once, but before you are trying to get the first "mod+signed" driver installed.
>Here< you can find all needed informations about how to import the Win-RAID CA certificate. Since all required files are present within a separate folder of my "mod+signed" driverpacks, nothing has to be downloaded separately.

Additional remarks:
  • Although I have done my very best while preparing the "modded" drivers, I cannot give any guarantee, that they will work flawlessly with any Intel AHCI or RAID system. That is why the usage of my "modded" drivers will be at the user’s own risk.
  • If you want to know, which Intel RST/RST(e) driver versions I recommend to use for the different Intel AHCI or RAID systems, you should look >here< (gererall informations) or >here< (performance comparison tests).



Universally usable
Intel AHCI/RAID drivers

(modded and digitally signed)
(last updated: 10/27/2022)

Note: You have to use WinRAR from v5.xx up or 7-Zip from v18xx up to get the drivers extracted.


I. Intel AHCI/RAID drivers from the "classical" Intel RST Series
(using just 1 single driver named iaStor.sys)

Notes regarding the below listed drivers:
  • Supported: All available known Intel SATA AHCI and RAID Controllers from the old Intel ICH6R/M Southbridge up to latest Intel 300-Series and X399 Chipsets.
  • Usable with: All Windows Operating Systems from XP up.

Here are the latest and probably best "classical" Intel RST AHCI/RAID drivers:
  • 
Mod+signed Intel RST drivers from the v11 platform