Drivers for SSD and HDD

[Piospi]

Hi guys, Sorry for newbie question. Please tell me what drivers I need for Samsung 830 128GB and F3 1TB (storage) ? Windows drivers or Intel® Rapid Storage Technology, which is best ? Greetings ^^

 

[Cerb]

Hi guys, Sorry for newbie question. Please tell me what drivers I need for Samsung 830 128GB and F3 1TB (storage) ? Windows drivers or Intel® Rapid Storage Technology, which is best ? Greetings ^^

N/A.

If your SATA ports are in IDE mode (sometimes called legacy), you'll use it like a PATA drive. This is generally bad, because you don't get command queuing, which will make substantial performance difference with both the SSD and HDD.

If your SATA ports are in native SATA mode, AKA RAID (but sometimes RAID is basically AHCI, especially on mobos from the last few years), AKA auto, AKA default (if IDE is the other option), AKA enhanced, you may or may not get command queuing w/o RST installed (MS decided AHCI would be a, "turn everything on," option in 7, rather than non-AHCI SATA; but you can typically use RST to get command queuing, if you don't have AHCI and wish to use Windows 7), and XP will not typically install (some big vendor restore discs are exceptions).

If your SATA ports are in AHCI mode (I've used mobos with a 'RAID/AHCI' option, and read of mobos where 'RAID', without any RAID set up, was AHCI...if you see an AHCI option in your BIOS, ignore all this ), Vista may or may not install, XP definitely won't, and 7 will be happy as can be.

So, generally, AHCI > RAID (which might be AHCI, too) > normal SATA > IDE.



If installing Windows 7, set the SATA controller to AHCI mode first, if available, then install Windows. Yay, all done. RST is entirely optional, and can be installed later. If you want any features of it, go for it. If not, don't worry about it. Windows 7 will automatically see that it's a SSD, create aligned partitions, and change the default services run to best use the SSD. Given the size, disable hibernation, if you don't use it, once you're up and running. If your motherboard does not support have AHCI, set it to the next best, and install RST.

I don't really have enough experience w/ Vista. IIRC, you do need RST for best performance on Vista, though.

For Windows XP, I would slipstream new SATA drivers into an image, and burn that to use, to not use IDE mode. I would partition the disk with Windows 7 for alignment (or, Google on other options to make aligned partitions, if you don't have ready access to Windows 7). Then, once running, decide on disk-heavy services to disable.