MSAHCI or IASTOR: which driver to use

[perdomot]

I've noticed that there are two different drivers for our ssds and was wondering which should be used for optimum performance. I'm using the MSAHCI driver from my windows 7 64 OS. Any advice?

 

[PowerYoga]

I have a similar problem and found this article. The general trend I see is to use msahci instead.

http://www.overclock.net/ssd/871150-difference-between-msachi-iastor.html

Here's another article that may not be exactly what you need since its Crucial but it does have some good tidbits.

http://www.forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/Using-msahci-instead-of-iastor/m-p/30018

 

[razel]

From my experience with laptops the Intel driver enables alot of power savings features. More than a year ago, it was too aggressive with it's settings that it consistently affected benchmarks, but not real-life usage. I had to set my laptop power option to 'high performance' to equal the MSAHCI. That's not the case anymore.

I'd just stick to whatever is already installed, especially if the Intel driver is a recent one and not mess with it unless you have to. Of the three laptops I maintain with SSD only one has the Intel driver, the other two are MSACHI. No issues, no problems so I left it be.

 

[perdomot]

Thanks, thought there might be a noticeable difference but I guess not.

 

[Voo]

The Intel drivers can offer large performance gains for some drives under some circumstances and provides most of the energy saving options for the drives.

The MS drivers are a nice backup solution if the Intel drivers make problems, but that's about it. Not that I would lose much sleep over it.