Asmedia sata 3 drivers Crashing

[Emie700]

Hello! I have a z77 asrock extreme4 mother board. I have bios and drivers all up to date accept for the asmedia sata 3 drivers. Unfortunaly every time I download and install it my pc will not boot up again after it prompts for a restart. Once I start up my pc after I install the driver, I get the windows 8 message "your pc has run into a problem" . Afterword it attempts to reboot again and fails. Then it automatically restores my system to the point before I installed the driver. I really need this driver installed as I think it is whats is hindering my ssd,hdd and my optical drive performance..... My optical drive seems to be tranfering/copying data very slow in some cd installations. And my ssd is not getting the speeds it should. I have tried installing the driver multiple times and crash after crash... what could be the problem? Is my motherboard bad or what? I'm running windows 8. CPU- I5 3570k GPU:gtx60 Ram- 8 Gigs crucial ssd- Samsung 830 128g

[parsec]

Re: Asmedia sata 3 drivers Crashing

Are you using the ASMedia driver listed for Windows 8, ASMedia SATA3 driver ver:1.3.8. New as of 11/1/2012.

But are you using the ASMedia SATA III ports instead of the Intel SATA III ports? The Intel SATA III ports are much faster, no comparison. Also, since the ASMedia chipset uses only one PCIe lane, at 5Gb/s max, two drives on it and working at the same time, will slow it down more.

Optical drives run a SATA I speed, and will be better off on the Intel SATA II ports.

[Emie700]

Re: Asmedia sata 3 drivers Crashing

Yes, the one I am trying to install is the latest one for win 8 11/1/2012. I actually didn't notice that there were two types of sata 3 ports!? I suppose the A-# are the asus? I will try switching them over then. And which column of the black sata 2 ports would be for intel? So does this mean I don't need to install the asmedia sata3 driver then if im using Intel chipset? I Feel uncomfortable when things don't work the way they are suppose. I will try switching the cables around and see if it fixes the driver.

[parsec]

Re: Asmedia sata 3 drivers Crashing

With the board mounted in the case, the ASMedia ports are the ones on the top of the stack of ports, which are gray. The two gray ones below those are the Intel SATA 6Gb/s ports, and right below them are the black Intel 3Gb/s ports.

Before you switch ports, you must check what driver is installed on the Intel ports, if they were enabled. If you installed Windows on the ASMedia ports, hopefully it was in AHCI mode, and the same for the Intel ports. Windows 7 should have installed its standard AHCI driver, msahci, on the Intel ports if they were enabled. That's fine, and later you could install the Intel IRST driver, which is meant for use in AHCI mode too.

You better check the current settings in the BIOS/UEFI, in Storage Configuration, which should default to AHCI. If you installed Windows in IDE mode, then you just can't change ports without changing the Intel's to IDE. There's a registry update to fix this without installing Windows again, but let us know what SATA settings you have now before changing, because if they are not right, the PC will BSOD when you swap the cables and try to boot.

[Emie700]

Re: Asmedia sata 3 drivers Crashing

Thank you for your help parsec! Yes, everything was set to ahci mode by default so all I did was switch over the cables. My SSD is operating at full capacity now. Also I installed the asmedia sata3.0 driver successfully. (even though I guess I wont use? Since it crash?) Was having problems with the optical drive speed while installing programs from discs and I thought the lack of the driver was causeing it to copy/transfer data very slowly. Someone told me that maybe my drive is in PIO mode or something but I couldn't find where to check in my device manager.

[parsec]

Re: Asmedia sata 3 drivers Crashing

Great, glad to hear that!

The add-on SATA controllers like the ASMedia and Marvell can cause problems, but some users use them just fine, so who knows. I would not use them for your OS drive. I use them on general storage drives, and they are fine.

This PIO mode thing you mentioned is not quite accurate. What they might mean is that an optical drive is a "packet device", which is true, and different than a regular HDD or SSD. Some of the ASMedia and Marvell SATA chipsets don't work well with optical drives (PIO), and some mobo manufactures have added notes about that, in fine print in their manuals. The Intel SATA ports are fine with optical drives, just put them on the bottom SATA II ports.

The thing to remember is if your board has more than six SATA ports, it has an add on SATA chip, and you then must check the manual to find out which SATA ports are which, because as you know, it makes a difference.

[Emie700]

Re: Asmedia sata 3 drivers Crashing

Thanks again Parsec. I really appreciate it! Was about to RMA my motherboard........

[baconbrain]

Re: Asmedia sata 3 drivers Crashing

Are you using the ASMedia driver listed for Windows 8, ASMedia SATA3 driver ver:1.3.8. New as of 11/1/2012.

But are you using the ASMedia SATA III ports instead of the Intel SATA III ports? The Intel SATA III ports are much faster, no comparison. Also, since the ASMedia chipset uses only one PCIe lane, at 5Gb/s max, two drives on it and working at the same time, will slow it down more.

Optical drives run a SATA I speed, and will be better off on the Intel SATA II ports.

@Parsec: Interesting info which prompts me to ask a general config question. I have four sata II HDs which I want to run as raid 5. One Sata III SSD on which I would like to install the OS in UEFI mode and one Optical Drive. What would be the best way to connect these in your opinion and how can one differentiate between raid and AHCI mode in the UEFI if all are placed on the intel controller?


Thanks for your help in advance,

B

[parsec]

Re: Asmedia sata 3 drivers Crashing

Intel SATA chipsets only allow one SATA mode, unlike apparently some AMD SATA chipsets, but that is not a problem at all.

AHCI is a subset of RAID, meaning RAID mode, when used with single, non-RAID array drives, are just treated the same as if the SATA mode was set to AHCI. For SSDs, that means you still have TRIM for single SSDs when in RAID mode. You could set the SATA mode to RAID and never create a RAID array/volume, and it's just like being in AHCI mode. Intel calls that "RAID ready", meaning you can then create RAID arrays anytime. So no need to differentiate between them in different modes.

If you have an OS on a drive installed in IDE or AHCI mode, you cannot just change it to RAID mode, the PC will BSOD when you boot after the change. There is a registry change that can be done to allow changing to RAID mode with an OS installed in the other modes. Otherwise for a fresh OS installation of Windows 7, set the SATA mode to RAID, and you can install the so called "F6-Flppy" RAID driver from a USB flash drive, when the Install Driver option is available during the OS install. You supposedly do not need to do that with Windows 7, as it has a built in Intel RAID driver, but I've never tried that.

When you say install in UEFI mode, do you mean having disks formatted in GPT? I've never done that but I might try it over the winter. People say that is a pain and not worth it.

I would start your setup with the SSD on first Intel SATA III port, and the optical drive on the last Intel SATA II port. Don't connect any other drives at that time, or Windows will put the MBR on another drive, and if you remove or format that drive, the PC will no longer boot. Install the OS in RAID mode, and then install the Intel IRST driver package in Windows. Once all your drivers are installed, then connect your HDDs to the Intel SATA II ports. Don't bother putting one HDD on the other SATA III port, it won't make any difference in speed. But if you did it won't hurt anything. You can then configure the RAID 5 of the HDDs with the Windows IRST GUI, or in the IRST interface that runs during POST. IMO, the Windows interface is just easier.

[baconbrain]

Re: Asmedia sata 3 drivers Crashing

Parsec,

Thanks for the excellent response!

I decided to play around with storage pools instead of setting up a raid so I connected the HDs to the sata II intel ports, the ssd to the intel sata III port, and the optical drive to the asmedia port with all set to AHCI.