Windows 10: Intel RST on Creators Update

I did not say this.

NVMe is a M.2 SSD reference.
There are specific drivers for that. I don't know if this will work for you. Haven't played with an M.2 drive yet.
NVM Express

 

Hi,

If you're trying this on an (Toshiba?) NVMe drive then the NVME driver from OCZ (Toshiba) is what you need or at least W10 built in NVMe driver. Not sure what's in that laptop, Dell says a Toshiba M2 card.

Now, should you want to build a raid with this and another drive then you should create the volume(s) in EFI/Bios first switching from AHCI to RAID and so on.
If you include the system drive then you will need to reinstall W10.

I'll post a screenshot of my setup if you like, I'm using a dual boot, one using a NVMe drive and the other a RAID using two SSDs and RST.
Should I remove the RAID0 drives and switch back to AHCI in EFI then I can still load Intel's latest RST AHCI controller driver or MS standard one.


Either way, what you're trying to do should work if I read you correctly.


Cheers, *Wink

 

Yeah. that's Toshiba THNSN5512GPUK that currently runs on a Windows driver. And I indeed seek to replace the default driver with the Intel one, as Toshiba doesn't seem to provide the dedicated one (many people ask for it at OCZ forums).

I tried to extract the IRST package and run its files directly, but the archive contains files of no direct use and the 64-bit msi package claims to have insufficient rights.

 

Hi,

But RST itself (the GUI app) is of no use to you. All you need are the storage drivers from Intel of the same architecture as your system (probably x64).
You can't replace the NVMe driver with this one though, but you can update the AHCI controller with that Intel driver.

Return to the Intel site, linked posted in a prior post, and download and unpack the so called floppy install drivers.
Then proceed as I described above.

Cheers, *Wink

 

Wow, then I'm getting confused about all this... I understand I don't need RAID driver as such as I'm just using one HDD. I do presume though I can replace the default MS AHCI driver with Intel's one as it should offer better performance.

But given I won't run any RAID, why would I want to use the RAID over AHCI option in BIOS?

And - would you be so kind and advise me which device I should seek the driver for in case of AHCI? Would that be a storage controller? I have currently two listed: MS Storage Spaces Controller and Standard NVM Express Controller. I don't seem to have the expected IDE ATA / ATAPI controller in my Device Manager!

 

Hi,

If that Toshiba NVME drive is the only drive in your laptop then that MS Storage NVMe driver is all you need.
I get beter benchmark results using non MS drivers but benchmarks are just that.

Now, imagine you'd add a second drive inside your laptop using a SATA port. (No idea if that's at all possible but I assume so given that your EFI supports RAID) then you'll see the AHCI controller appear under device management using MS standard AHCI driver. Then that's the one you can replace with Intel's driver should you want to.
Although I don't see why you'd want to.
Your laptop does no longer support IDE but uses SATA protocol instead which can run in IDE mode (you do not want that) or much better AHCI mode (Advanced Host Controller Interface) or RAID (even when there's only one drive present.


Since your Toshiba drive is NVMe it uses it's own protocol, bypassing the SATA protocol and using PCIe bus Gen 3 in your case which allows I/O speeds about 6 times faster than SATA.


So, all in all, forget about these RST things, they're of no use for your laptop at the time being.

Dell often sets the UEFI settings to RAID instead of AHCI for some reason unknown to me.
Furthermore, I know for a fact that Intel's AHCI drivers won't bring a gain in performance. I've never been able to measure any performance gain. MS drivers are quite probably based on Intel's to begin with. Just a deal between the two companies, I guess.

Should you have any further questions, I'll gladly reply.

Cheers, *Wink

 

OK, I keep fighting *Wink

I've changed the BIOS setting to RAID and now under Storage Controllers instead of Standard NVM Express Controller I have Intel Chipster SATA RAID Controller. Still no IDE ATA / ATAPI section in the Device Manager...

Now I can't really say - is it better / worse / the same?

 

Many thanks for all your advice, fdgroove!!!

So it looks I'll revert back to the simple AHCI and skip the SATA controller, as for sure I won't play with any RAID (I'm using NAS servers to store my files and handles backups).

 

Hi,

You'll never see IDE controller on that laptop. The NVMe storage controller should still be there though.

Cheers, *Wink