@2mg : Although it didn’t make much sense for me to test old ASMedia AHCI Vista/Win7 drivers while running Win10 (the in-box MS driver is much better!), I have done some additional tests with the following ASMedia 106x drivers, which were designed for Vista/Win7: 1. v3.1.9.0 dated 11/12/2015 2. v2.0.9.1 dated 03/26/2014 3. v1.4.1.0 dated 12/26/2012 Result: Only the more than 8 years old ASMedia AHCI driver v1.4.1.0 for Vista/Win7 lets the ASMedia 106x SATA Controller show the “Policies” tab. Here are the related pictures:
My conclusion:
I can confirm, that only the very old v1 platform ASMedia 106x AHCI drivers gives the user the option to disable the “Safely remove disk” feature from within the Device Manager.
Since the connection of the bootable system drive to any ASMedia SATA port is never a good idea (the chipset own SATA ports are much better performant), the missing option to disable the “Safely remove disk” option from within the Device Manager is not important for me (some mainboard BIOSes offer the option as well, the systray icon can be removed anyway).
Win10 users, who want or have to use the on-board ASMedia SATA ports for storage purposes or for an Optical Drive, should stick to the Win10 in-box MS AHCI or IDE driver.
After having completed my tests, I don’t see any reason to offer the ASMedia 106x SATA drivers v1.4.1.0 within the start post of the thread.
@Fernando : I know, however I stumbled upon this issue on a PC with ASmedia SATA when I installed W10 on it, and couldn’t figure out what to do. As I also said, old 1.x.x drivers are probably a bad idea on W10, but 2.x and 3.x drivers don’t offer the Policies tab to disable hot plug.
But if you do install ASmedia SATA 2.x or 3.x drivers, the “TreatAsInternalPort” registry trick for generic MS SATA driver on W10 actually hides drivers, now I don’t know if that is because that driver is actually being used instead of ASmedia driver, or that registry works regardless if you have 2.x/3.x ASMedia drivers installed.
EDIT by Fernando: Fully quoted post replaced by directly addressing to the author (to save space)
@2mg : It is very easy to verify which driver is currently in-use by a certain device: Run the Device Manager, do a right-click onto the related device and choose the options "Properties" > "Driver" > "Driver Details". If there are more devices with the same name listed, you should check as first step the HardwareIDs of them to find out the desired device.
@2mg : If you want to check the in-use storage drivers, you should not check the "Disk Drives" section of the Device Manager (the "Disk Management" is done only my MS drivers and INF files). The Storage Controllers are listed within the "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" or/and "Storage Controllers" sections.
Well, that will only show that these controllers are installed and enabled, but I still can’t confirm in W10 that 3.x.x ASmedia driver is actually controlling those 2 drives I’ve shown in my previous reply.
I checked registry for ASmedia entry, and they don’t have the ENUM key, which as I understand means that that driver actually is used/has a purpose.
@2mg : All listed SATA Controllers with a Company’s name in it (e.g. “ASMedia” oder “Intel”) are currently using a storage driver from the related Company. All SATA AHCI Controllers, which are currently using the generic in-box MS AHCI driver, are shown within the Device Manager with the name “Standard SATA AHCI Controller” (Win10) or “Standard AHCI1.0 Serial ATA Controller” (Win7).
Note: Due to the fact, that these generic drivers are WHQL certified, they can be used from scratch with all NVMe SSDs resp. their Controllers! Thanks to our Forum member Black6spdZ for the hint to these extremely hidden Phison NVMe drivers.
The 64bit Win10 driver has already been tested by me with a Samsung 970 EVO Plus (look >here<). Much more interesting will be a benchmark comparison with a non-Samsung NVMe SSD. Maybe I will do it tomorrow with a Sabrent Rocket 4.0.
I understand your confusion - the answer is different since yesterday, because we found recently a much better solution than before. Within the start post of this thread I am offering now generic 32/64bit Phison NVMe drivers v1.5.0.0 WHQL for Win7 x86/x64. These are the first and lonely NVMe drivers, which a) do support the NVMe Controller of all NVMe SSDs and b) are WHQL certified (precondition for storage drivers to be accepted by the OS Setup). Good news for users, who want to get Win7 installed onto an NVMe SSD: There is no need anymore to integrate the related 2 MS NVMe Hotfixes into the boot.wim and install.wim of the Win7 Image. From now on it should be possible to get the NVMe SSD detected by the Win7 Setup and accepted as target disk drive by simply loading the related Phison NVMe driver, which has been designed for being used with Win7. By the way - once the OS installation is completed, the NVMe driver can be replaced even by a mod+signed NVMe driver. Good luck! Dieter (alias Fernando)
Question: Why have the OFA NVMe Drivers been removed from the start post?
As you may have already realized, the previously offered very performant original and mod+signed OFA NVMe drivers are not listed anymore within the start post of this thread. Reason: They are dispensable now, because now we got access to generic WHQL certified NVMe drivers with a performance like the OFA drivers (no wonder, see below). Contrary to the previously offered OFA drivers the Phison ones should be usable even from scratch with all Windows Operating Systems from Win7 up.
After having gotten access to the recently discovered (well hidden) generic Phison NVMe drivers v1.5.0.0 WHQL I suspected it already, but after having done a deeper look into the *.INF and *.SYS files I am sure: The basis code of the Phison drivers v1.5.0.0 dated 02/23/2018 was not compiled by the Company Phison, but by the developers of the OpenFabrics Alliance (OFA). In reality these NVMe drivers are hardly hidden updates of the latest OFA drivers v1.5.0.0 Build 157 dated 04/07/2017. These are the clues:
The names of the real 32/64bit drivers (nvme.sys) and their version numbers (v1.5.0.0) are absolutely identical.
The content of the related information text files named nvme.inf are almost identical Really different are only the given names of the NVMe Controller and its Manufacturer: a) OFA: “Community OFA NVMe 1.2 Storport Miniport” / "Community" b) Phison: “Phison NVMe 1.2 Storport Miniport” / “Phison Electronics Corporation”.
As you can see here, the original OFA and Phison drivers named nvme.sys have both been digitally test signed by a “not trustworthy” Company (left Pic: OFA, right Pic: Phison):
@onuracengiz : Thanks for the links to the “KingSpec NVMe Drivers v10.4.31.0” (containing SiliconMotion drivers dated 07/13/2017) and the “Apacer NVMe Drivers v1.3.0.0” (containing OFA? drivers v1.4.0.0 dated 12/08/2014). Since both driverpacks contain generic NVMe drivers, which a) are much older than the recently offered generic Phison NVMe drivers and b) cannot be used from scratch due to the missing WHQL stamp from Microsoft, I will not offer them within the start post.
hello, sorry for the question i tried to read and understand the topic but i did not understand… please help. i have a dell xps with toshiba ssd, can i install a new modded driver? thank you
@onuracengiz : Thank you very much for the recent links to various NVMe and SATA drivers. I have stored them all within my already very voluminous drivers archive. The most interesting ones seem to be the brandnew WHQL certified NVMe RAID drivers delivered by the Company HighPoint. That is why I have put them into the start post of this thread.
@MDM : Thanks for your benchmark comparison test results. I have moved both posts into >this< better matching thread.
@kimikale : Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum! If you are not satisfied with the MS Win10 in-box NVMe driver or with the one OCZ/Toshiba is offering, you can try the generic Samsung NVMe driver, which has been mod+signed by me to make it usable with all NVMe Controllers. You can find the Samsung and OCZ/Toshiba drivers within the first 2 posts of this thread. Don’t forget to import the Win-RAID CA Certificate before you install any of my mod+signed drivers. Furthermore it is always a good idea to set a “Restore Point” before starting such driver comparison tests. Good luck! Dieter (alias Fernando)
