Intel driver

[MaxJW]

Hi all I'm the new guy, I have searched the forum and not found this question, hope I'm right with that. My problem is I have a fatality x79 pro board I have a Samsung 840 pro 256 gig ssd with win 7 64 bit installed, it is plugged into the sata 3 "0" port hoping it was running off the intel driver, I can't confirm that it is. When I go into device manager it shows Microsoft as the driver. How in the world do I get to intel drivers with only 1 hard drive? I'm assuming that intel is only for raid setup, not sure. Another problem is my keyboard will lose connection for a second and then it's ok, any ideas on these 2 problems would be great. Thanks Max One thing I forgot the reason I'm wanting intel drivers is my write speeds for this drive are awful, read speeds are good, Thanks again.

[parsec]

Re: Intel driver

Hopefully you installed Windows in AHCI mode, the default SATA mode setting in the BIOS. If you changed to IDE, you have some work to do, but I'll assume you are in AHCI mode.

Then again, are you checking the driver of the SATA controller, or the 840? You should be checking the driver of the SATA controller, which should be msahci with Windows 7, if the Intel driver was not installed. If you were checking the Disk/840's driver, and now check the SATA controllers driver, you may find you have the Intel driver installed. In Device Manager, find the SATA Controller, which is in the Storage Controllers entry, not in Disks.

Will you first confirm this for us? Given your comment about write speeds, I have a feeling the Intel driver is installed, and a quick fix for the lower write speeds can be done.

[MaxJW]

Re: Intel driver

Thanks for looking into this, yes it was installed in AHCI and yes Intel series c600 sata ahci controller is there.

[parsec]

Re: Intel driver

Ok, and is that where you see the the Microsoft driver? Double click on the C600 SATA controller, click on the Driver tab, and then Driver details. What does it say?

There are two Intel SATA drivers on your boards download page, Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver and utility ver:11.7.0.1013, and Intel Rapid Storage Technology enterprise driver and utility ver:3.5.0.1101.

While both of those drivers provide RAID support, they both work perfectly fine in AHCI mode as an AHCI driver. Download one or the other, unzip the file, and run the setup or .exe file to install it.

[MaxJW]

Re: Intel driver

Thanks again for info, in the sata controller it did show an intel driver, i went ahead and downloaded and installed the utility 3.5.0.1101. Now the write speeds are worse, Samsung 840 pro has max seq read of 540 i got 534 that's good, max random read IOPS 100100 i got 85422 also good. Max seq write 520 i get 219, max random write IOPS 90000 i get 4685 both i feel are awful, or maybe i'm stuck with it. I'm lost at this point.

[parsec]

Re: Intel driver

You likely will get better performance with the Intel IRST driver rather than the RSTe driver.

But do this first, start Device Manager, open up Disks, and your 840. Click on the Policies tab, and on the Enable write caching entry (which will be checked), uncheck it, and click OK. Then go right back in and into the Policies tab, and check Enable write caching, and click OK.

The Intel RAID/AHCI drivers have write caching disabled by default, even when Windows thinks it is enabled in Device Manager. Doing the above is the standard procedure to fix this, believe it or not.

[MaxJW]

Re: Intel driver

Thanks, can I just install the IRST driver right over whats there now, and do i need to do the write cache checking again?

[MaxJW]

Re: Intel driver

Bingo, got it thank you very much. I uninstalled the first driver and put in the IRST, don't see it in device manager but still works good. Write speeds jumped from seq write 219 to 482 and random write 4696 to 56206. Now I'll start looking into my keyboard issue of losing power on occasion. Thanks Again

[odiebugs]

Re: Intel driver

Bingo, got it thank you very much. I uninstalled the first driver and put in the IRST, don't see it in device manager but still works good. Write speeds jumped from seq write 219 to 482 and random write 4696 to 56206. Now I'll start looking into my keyboard issue of losing power on occasion. Thanks Again

That's because it moved from drives to under storage controller, if the controller hardware was missing, you wouldn't be posting .

[parsec]

Re: Intel driver

That's because it moved from drives to under storage controller, if the controller hardware was missing, you wouldn't be posting .

Actually from IDE/ATA/ATAPI controllers, to Storage Controllers. It's been so long since I've seen that entry in Device Manager, I can't remember exactly what it's called.

[MaxJW]

Re: Intel driver

What i meant by not showing up is there is nothing under storage controllers but ASrock Ram Disk, I don't care it works great.

[parsec]

Re: Intel driver

Max, you're right, you won't see it in Storage Controllers unless the SATA mode is RAID, in AHCI mode it won't be there. I'm so used to seeing it there, and using RAID mode, I forgot about that, and apparently someone else too...

[odiebugs]

Re: Intel driver

Max, you're right, you won't see it in Storage Controllers unless the SATA mode is RAID, in AHCI mode it won't be there. I'm so used to seeing it there, and using RAID mode, I forgot about that, and apparently someone else too...

Yes, my bad, then its under IDE/ATA/ATAPI. If its not in devise, then you have no SATA controller.