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Doctor Four
My other vehicle is a TARDIS
Premium Member
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX

1 edit

Doctor Four

Premium Member

Asus P5Q SE Plus SATA RAID driver question

I was reading through the manuals on this MB and saw something about the need to load a SATA driver when installing an OS (in my case Windows XP 32 bit). Looking through the files on the support DVD and those on Asus' website I could not find a SATA RAID driver for the Intel ICH10R Southbridge.

Is this one where the support for SATA devices is built into the BIOS, or do I need to load a third party driver when Windows Setup displays the prompt to press F6?

All I could find relating to this is AHCI drivers, and something about this only being for Vista. I did however find files on Intel's site, Intel Matrix Storage Manager 8.7.1007, and the actual F6 driver diskette, which both appear to be for Intel boards, and not necessarily Asus.

Edit: in case anyone is looking for an answer to this, there isn't, in a way. This particular MB does not support RAID - it uses the ICH10, not the ICH10R (the R suffix indicates RAID) chipset, and SATA drive detection is handled by the BIOS. I posted a question about it in the alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus newsgroup about it, and got a couple answers. Good thing I haven't begun the build yet - I might have gotten a BSOD right from the start had I used those Intel drivers. Looks like I'm going to delete them.

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

2 edits

1 recommendation

koitsu

MVM

The drivers you're looking for specifically *are* the AHCI drivers, otherwise known as the Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers.

On the left, click "Download Intel® Matrix Storage Manager Software", and then pick Windows XP Professional. You'll be given a list of driver packages. The one you want is:
32-bit Floppy Configuration Utility (202KB) -- 8.7.0.1007 -- 1/9/2009

Unpack the ZIP file to a floppy disk, or slipstream the files (if you make your own XP CDs). Either method works. This will add support for AHCI mode, and BIOS-level RAID (which uses AHCI as well).

If you use the F6 floppy method, or the slipstreaming method, you might be given a list of controllers/modes to choose from. I'm pretty sure the one you want will be labelled:
Intel(R) ICH10R SATA AHCI Controller

I've done this on my Asus P5Q SE board (which uses the ICH10, not the ICH10R). The P5Q SE (not /R) supports AHCI mode, but not RAID.

One thing to keep in mind: this *will* require a complete reinstall of the OS, because the base device naming scheme in Windows changes. Otherwise, you'll get a bluescreen, as the above Intel URL documents.

Finally, you do not need "Asus's drivers" -- you can (and should) safely use Intel's site for this. There is nothing Asus-specific about the ICH10 or ICH10R.

EDIT: One thing to point out: if you don't have the P5Q SE/R, then there's not much advantage to using AHCI mode unless you plan on hot-swapping disks in your machine (in which case AHCI is definitely what you want). You can leave the BIOS option set to IDE, and you will still achieve SATA300 speed. I've benchmarked both modes on XP, and there's really not much of a difference. On FreeBSD or Linux, I would *highly* recommend using AHCI.