Intel Rapid Storage Technology Drivers 11.6 and 11.7

[wevsspot]

If you are running a P67 or Z68 chipset board and are tempted to give these new IRST drivers a try......  I'd warn against it.  They do bring added functionality for those running Z77 or later chipsets, but they have been causing some issues for those running the older chipsets - especially if you have a RAID array.

 

I got adventurous this morning and thought I'd give the 11.6 drivers a try.  It didn't work out too well.  The driver wouldn't load at startup, and even if I booted into safe mode and force started the driver my array would fail.  Thinking it was a bug that surely they worked out in version 11.7 I went about installing version 11.7...... needless to say that didn't work out too well either.

 

Fortunately I had an archive file of the IRST version 10.6 driver and I was able to install those over the top of the 11.7s.

 

Apparently I got lucky, because there are reports out (I researched after the fact ) that the new drivers have completely broken some RAID arrays resulting in having to break the array and start with a fresh installation of Windows.

 

And you cannot roll back to an earlier version of the driver using Device Manager.

 

Just a public service announcement  

 

P67 or Z68 + RAID array = stay away from ISRT drivers 11.6 or 11.7

[90sgamer]

I experienced the exact same problems with both of these drivers on my Z77 board, but what I found was the RST drivers crashed when a HDD was attached to a 3rd party controller (ASmedia SATA3). RAID or no RAID on the Intel controller, same problem. I was pulling my hair out over this problem, and I could find very little information about it online except 1 thread.

 

I think its because the Intel storage option ROM in my BIOS firmware is old (11.0 something) and hasn't been updated yet (even with the lastest BIOS version for my board). I'm currently on 11.1.0.1006 with no problems.

Edited February 9, 2013 by 90sgamer