Fast Question about Intel Rapid Storage ?

AMD has something else for NVMe drives: AMD RAID Installer (SATA, NVMe RAID)
Supported RAID Levels RAID 0,1,10 for both NVMe and SATA RAID on the above listed AMD products.

This driver package supports the operating system/boot device included in the RAID array and standalone NVMe boot device with a separate SATA RAID storage array.

Package Includes:

AMD RAID Drivers
AMD RAIDXpert Utility

It's just a single gen 4 drive.

ddelo said:

Please have in mind that, if you decide to update your AHCI driver (through Device Manager and not via Intel's installation, which also installs the RST application), not all new drivers perform the same with your motherboard and disk. In other words new doesn't mean better, especially for RST drivers. There is a fine line between modern driver and best performance, which is a combination of motherboard and driver. You can read all about it in the above link.

Agree with ddelo here.
It has always been my policy to only install the IRST driver offered by the motherboard manufacturer for my board or Laptop. This is the tested application package they think works best with that chipset and board.
As the information in the link provides, you can try and update/upgrade the IRST package from Intel, but it is hit and miss at best to find the correct one that provides better (or the same!) performance. It can be done, but it can take some effort.
If the motherboard/laptop manufacturer posts a newer IRST package for their product I may install that.

My procedure is to just install the IRST package recommended for my board to get my AHCI driver, then disable and hide the IRST app until it is needed. Then it is just a matter of going to the Start menu.

ddelo said:

Please have in mind that, if you decide to update your AHCI driver (through Device Manager and not via Intel's installation, which also installs the RST application), not all new drivers perform the same with your motherboard and disk. In other words new doesn't mean better

(to show quote TV" is refering to)

TV2 said:

Agree with ddelo here.
It has always been my policy to only install the IRST driver offered by the motherboard manufacturer for my board or Laptop. This is the tested application package they think works best with that chipset and board.
As the information in the link provides, you can try and update/upgrade the IRST package from Intel, but it is hit and miss at best to find the correct one that provides better (or the same!) performance. It can be done, but it can take some effort.
If the motherboard/laptop manufacturer posts a newer IRST package for their product I may install that.

My procedure is to just install the IRST package recommended for my board to get my AHCI driver, then disable and hide the IRST app until it is needed. Then it is just a matter of going to the Start menu.

Sorry I beg to differ here.

Please read this new security advisory from Intel:
INTEL-SA-00324

Systems running driver version 15.9.x, 16.0.x, 16.5.x, or 16.7.x should update to the latest version. Note: Intel recommends that end users utilize driver updates provided by their system manufacturer/provider or via Windows Update to eliminate the potential impact caused by loading non-customized drivers. System manufacturers regularly customize Intel generic drivers to meet the needs of their specific system design. In such cases, use of the Intel generic driver update is not recommended.
Quote from: Download Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology (Intel(R) RST) User Interface and Driver

This is just a generic warning from Intel in this case, as IRST doesn't get any mods from OEMs

Did someone noticed from the image on post #1 that there are two disks forming a Array?
Hoolm, can you please post a hole Disk Manager image?

The AHCI driver performance, has to do with its compatibility with the RAID ROM/EFI BIOS. So someone has to first find his RAID ROM/EFI BIOS version and then look for the best matching driver either in Intel's support page or win-raid forum.

From there you can either download and install through Device Manager the driver only (f6flpy-x64.zip) or the complete package including the application if you need to setup RAID (SetupRST.exe).

It should also be mentioned, that best performing AHCI drivers, which are not developed after January 2018, might pose a risk to the Speculation Control vulnerabilities (Thanks to @Cliff S, for pointing this out!)

You can install the Intel AHCI driver without the RST application/ raid/ Optane features by downloading the F6FLPY-X64.zip file on the Intel drivers page, then unzipping it and using the .inf file mentioned earlier. This file download is designed to put on a USB drive so that you can load the AHCI driver at Windows install time using the F6 option, but you can use it after install to install the AHCI driver as well.