Intel Rapid Storage Technology - RAID or AHCI

thenewoc

thenewoc

thenewoc

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Joined
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Hi,
I'm just reinstalling W8RP. My mobo manual says RST can only work in RAID mode. The driver download from msi says 'for SATA RAID and AHCI mode'. Would it be better to use AHCI?

Can I switch mode if I'm currently installed in RAID mode?
 
yes you can switch,raid contains the ahci drivers anyway,it should work fine in ahci mode

if your not using a raid setup then set to ahci
 
Hi,
Is there an option to change modes in Windows because if I do it in the bios it causes bsod?
I only have the one hard drive plus an ssd.
At the moment in RAID mode the bios also won't boot the winki light linux os which is on a small seperate partition.
 
I was going to cache the hard disk on the ssd :-s, thought that would be more efficient as you only use part of what's installed on your system drive, os included.

I've looked in the registry as I saw article explaining the reg key for ahci in w8 is different, now storahci, that already has the start key set to 0, so I think I must need the AHCI driver but this does not offer to install after changing the bios because bsod occurs before getting into windows.
 
for caching you have to use raid,then load intel rst drivers and select the hdd you want to cache,ahci on its own doesnt support caching,sorry for the confusion
 
thenewoc said:
My mobo manual says RST can only work in RAID mode. The driver download from msi says 'for SATA RAID and AHCI mode'.
Click to expand...

This is what's confusing, don't know if this means it can work with either mode or it uses both, i.e. AHCI for the SSD, dont know if I'll loose trim support otherwise.:rolleyes:
 
yes it means it can be used in raid and ahci mode,raid meaning caching most likely,you might lose trim support but youll still have garbage collection,plus the latest rst drivers support trim in raid,idk if that also applies to caching

i ran an ssd in caching mode for many months and performance didnt drop off,it works really well
 
Since I had the OS installed already in RAID mode I thought I'd give things a spin.

Used the RST driver from MSI's website (11.0.0.1032). Followed the default options, so created a 64GB cache on the SSD and left the rest as unallocated space which I sorted out in Disk Management to create a simple volume for the remaining 104GB. Just using the Enhanced Acceleration for now instead of Maximized. After a few reboots it now boots from first pressing the power on button to the desktop in around 20 seconds.

I'm also using the latest firmware (400i) for the Intel 520 SSD as of the current Intel SSD Toolbox (3.0.3). Sadly no SSD Optimizer in Toolbox, just says 'The selected drive is part of a RAID array. This feature is not supported on a RAID member.'.

Is garbage collection taken care of by RST?

http://i48.tinypic.com/sb261h.png
 
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