Z77 extreme 4 Intel SATA drivers

[Jonathon Wade]

HI

Im just wondering if i have the correct drivers installed for the Intel SATA 3 ports for my board.

On my board there are ASMedia sata 3 ports and the Intel ones.

Now on the motherboard driver CD there are specific ASMedia sata 3 drivers but not one for Intel

BUT

are the Intel drivers in with the chipset drivers, the INF drivers?

It got me thinking because i just bought my first SSD which is a samsung 830 series 128gb SATA 3 drive that im using for my system drive and i want to make sure i have the correct drivers installed if any...

Also the Intel usb 3 ports come with their own separate intell driver so do the Intel sata ports have a separate driver or like i said is it with the chipset, INF driver AND what about the Intel rapid storage driver?

Sorry for the newby questions but i want to make sure i got thing right.

Much thanks for any help

[parsec]

Re: Z77 extreme 4 Intel SATA drivers

I have your board, but I forget if the Intel SATA driver is part of the "chipset driver" package, which it probably is. That's also because I didn't use that one, but just because I like to get that driver from Intel. If you don't have that driver, you won't get all the features the Z77 chipset has, like SRT, but you may not need them.

The only Intel SATA driver for this (or any Intel board) is their IRST driver, which is used for either AHCI or RAID mode. The latest one is on the download page for this board on ASRock's site, "Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver ver:11.2.0.1006".

How to check what driver you have now? Open Control Panel and see if you find "Intel Rapid Storage Technology", which is the UI for creating, etc, RAID volumes.

Or, open Device Manager from Control Panel, and look in "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" or "Storage Controllers" for an Intel entry, double click that a choose the Driver tab, click Details, and if it's "iaStor.sys", it's the Intel driver.

If you can't find an Intel entry, but just "Standard AHCI Storage...", check that one as I described above, and it should say "msahci.sys" as the driver. That's the standard Microsoft AHCI driver.

All of this assumes you installed Windows with the SATA mode for the Intel chipset set to AHCI or RAID. If you set it to IDE, you'll have a standard Windows IDE driver.

[CRRacer]

Re: Z77 extreme 4 Intel SATA drivers

It's part of the intel package. The only thing you may need to install seperately for intel is the Intel USB 3.0 drivers.

[Jonathon Wade]

Re: Z77 extreme 4 Intel SATA drivers

I have your board, but I forget if the Intel SATA driver is part of the "chipset driver" package, which it probably is. That's also because I didn't use that one, but just because I like to get that driver from Intel. If you don't have that driver, you won't get all the features the Z77 chipset has, like SRT, but you may not need them.

The only Intel SATA driver for this (or any Intel board) is their IRST driver, which is used for either AHCI or RAID mode. The latest one is on the download page for this board on ASRock's site, "Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver ver:11.2.0.1006".

How to check what driver you have now? Open Control Panel and see if you find "Intel Rapid Storage Technology", which is the UI for creating, etc, RAID volumes.

Or, open Device Manager from Control Panel, and look in "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" or "Storage Controllers" for an Intel entry, double click that a choose the Driver tab, click Details, and if it's "iaStor.sys", it's the Intel driver.

If you can't find an Intel entry, but just "Standard AHCI Storage...", check that one as I described above, and it should say "msahci.sys" as the driver. That's the standard Microsoft AHCI driver.

All of this assumes you installed Windows with the SATA mode for the Intel chipset set to AHCI or RAID. If you set it to IDE, you'll have a standard Windows IDE driver.

Cheers for the help.
This is what i found under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > Intel(R) 7 Series/C216 Chipset Family SATA AHCI Controller - 1E02 > c:\windows\system32\DRIVERS\msahci.sys

And yes i did a fresh install of windows for the new SSD making sure the the BIOS was set to AHCI.

It's part of the intel package. The only thing you may need to install seperately for intel is the Intel USB 3.0 drivers.

Ok cheers, guess that's problem solved. Yea i installed the latest Intel USB 3 drivers from the ASRock website. Although im having trouble with the 2 front USB 3 ports that came with my case that plug into the header on my board. They do in essence work but every couple of minutes they lose connection and reconnect with whatever storage device i plug into them. Peripherals are ok like mouse and keyboard but external HDD's are what im having problems with. The back ones are working flawlessly, both Intel's and ASMedia's. So it may just be i got some baddies with my case.

Thanks for the help.