Windows 10: MSAHCI SATA Driver. Do we need anything else?

Hello.

I have been doing some tests on several Intel chipset hardware (mostly i7, 5th, 7th, 8th gen., running SATA drives from HDD 5400rpm to HDD 7200rpm to SSD). When doing winsat disk test, I have noticed there is little to no speed differences when using w10's MS native AHCI driver vs any Intel one (including the ones from IRST). More so, I have noticed latency is always lower with the msahci driver (which seems to be a good thing).

My 5th gen. i7 with SSD seems to boot up and shutdown a little faster with msahci driver too, so my question is do we really need anything else these days? Is there any scenario when Intel ones are needed (RAID or Optane maybe)?

What do you think and what are you using? I have also checked that ms ahci driver also works fine for a m2 ssd on AMD chipset (Ryzen processor).

:)

 

Windows boot manager doesn't recognize AHCI/SATA SSD

This is not the case as the BIOS doesn't recognize disk in AHCI but Windows is already configured with msahci driver.

As BIOS can't boot it directly because it doesn't see SATA disk so I would like to have a helper bootloader which boots from USB and then chain loads windows from SATA drive. HP will not help as the PC is out of warranty and the bug in BIOS won't be fixed.

 

What driver I have to implement (Or reuse from windows driver samples) to send SATA commands to SATA harddisk?

I am interested in sending SATA commands to harddisk (From the user space) . I had a look at
storshci mini port driver sample, but this has only functions specific to AHCI controller. I think one more driver need to be implemented which communicates with storshci driver.

It would help greatly If anybody can answer these questions.

• How to send commands to storahci miniport driver (Command, for example port initialize) ?
• Is storahci miniport driver itself sufficient to implement the sata commads? Or do I need to have a one more layered driver which sit on the top of this (Something like disk driver) ?
• In which sample driver, the SATA specific commands such as Identify device are implemented?

 

AMD SATA Driver Issue

Hi there,
besides my radeon problems, I have another issue with my system.

Specs:
Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3 Rev. 2.1 FKd Bios
AMD770/SB710
AMD Phenom II x4 965BE
8 GBytes RAM DDR-II 800
OCZ Vertex 2 SSD
2x Samsung P2270 Monitors

Problem: Bios is in AHCI mode, reinstalled Win7 64, works with the built in msahci driver.
Installing the AMD SATA driver has two effects:
-After the reboot the system gets stuck at the "Windows" start screen, the "activty" LED flashes repeatingly in a rhythmic pattern.

Uninstalling the SATA driver has no effect on the first mentioned problem, windows is stuck at the boot screen.
The only way to get the sys working back again is to switch in IDE Mode (thus loosing performance).
I already tried another SSD and HDD, which doesn't make a difference.
Any suggestions?

KR
Bene