Hi all,
been hopping in and out this forum since like forever.
I remember coming here to download modded Nvidia chipset drivers for my past systems. Good times.
Been sticking with AMD (CPU-GPU) for a looong time, and only recently decided to hop onto the intel bandwagon.

My newly Win10 system, everything on stock clocks, consists of:

i5-8600k
ASUS Prime Z370-A
16Gb DDR4 3200 Corsair Vengeance (2x8)
Gigabyte GTX 1080 Windforce OC
3x6Gb SATA WD 7200 HD's (2x2Tb+1x1Tb)

The two 2Tb HD's are configured in a RAID0 setup with three partitions, while the 1Tb HD is left alone for storage.

The problem I've been facing has already forced me to reformat two or three times, the reason mainly being unbootable system due to my fiddling with intel drivers in general and RST drivers in particular.

As of now I'm running on a clean updated OS (1809) with NO intel drivers of sort (networking, chipset, storage) and NO other software which might interfere (system tools, monitoring tools etc...) and the problem I'm about to describe seems to have gone.
Nevertheless, I'd be interested in trying to pinpoint its cause, also because I'm hardly resisting to install anything intel related.

The problem could be only described as a momentary - please pardon my expression - "system fart", happening mainly when launching task manager (had it happen opening services snap-in as well) but also when gaming.

In other words, when launching task manager the system freezes for a good two/three seconds, task manager window is not active, mouse is locked. Then the HD head ticks and activity resumes.
When gaming, the action simply locks randomly and then resumes within the same short, but extremely noticeable, time frame.
Won't go into the countless things I've tried to get rid of this, scavenging through BIOS and OS options.

The only thing that seems to have gotten rid of the problem is running my system WITHOUT intel drivers. But where lies the culprit? Networking? Chipset? RST?
I would obviously like to update all that is possible and anyone reading might righteously say the usual "if it ain't broke don't fix it", but we are also aware how this can't possibly satisfy our computer-geek need for knowledge.

Any help or insight would be much appreciated!

As I said, system is now running fine and I'm obviously very cautious about updating anything intel because I'm afraid the problem will return forcing me to install from scratch again.

Cheers,

Luca

I can now confirm that after 10 days without ANY intel driver of sort, the problem of my system randomly freezing and resuming has disappeared.
I think the culprit lies in the intel storage drivers I had installed.
At this point I'd appreciate any advice on which (if any) storage drivers I could try to squeeze more performance out of my RAID0 setup, although I'm obviously concerned about having to re-install everything from scratch should the freezing problem rear its ugly butt again.

I have already used the last two or three versions of the RST(e) drivers (including the best match for my RAID ROM), but the freezing issue was always present.

Maybe I should give the older RST (iaStor.sys only) a try?

Or maybe simply stick with what Win10 1809 installed natively?

Any advice truly welcome.

@Lurk - Do you have your main RAID partition aligned? I know those are not SSD, but I think all modern WD drives 4TB and above are advanced format drives and should be used with aligned partitions, I don't know how that affects RAID0 but to be on the safe side I would test aligned at 2048 instead of 1024, so if it is split in two then you're still at a good alignment of 1024
This can be done using Diskpart before install, but would require a clean install. That's the only thing that comes to mind when I read your description of the issue, I've seen that exact same on unaligned drives and when using Marvell driven SATA ports with SSD's too.

@Fernando - have you seen these issues with any particular driver for Z370, if yes what's the better one to avoid such stuttering?

Lost_N_BIOS and Fernando, thx all. I wasn't at all aware of partition alignment.

I'd like to do this step by step in order to avoid the risk of loosing information, so please be kind and stick with me by starting to acknowledge how OS installation was performed.
Fernando, my last win10 installation was done following your steps EXCEPT for the fact that the "spare" 1Tb HD where I keep my backups was LEFT CONNECTED while installing (possible issues?)
- RAID0 array was created newly through BIOS (2Tb + 2Tb identical WD HD's as per specs in first post).
- Diskpart was used prior to installation in order to format the two 2Tb HD's.
- OS was installed on a 200Gb partition on the RAID0 array, letting setup create its system partitions.
- Subsequent partitioning of the RAID0 array was done in OS using the disk management tool.

Before answering all your questions, let me ask you wether it's of any use for me to post disk information taken from the System Information tool, as from what I have acknowledged it should help understanding whether the partitions are aligned.

Hope you have the patience of going through this!

p.s. my bad regarding the "no intel drivers" part. I am aware that 1809 installs the intel driver it has available. I should have been more precise and say that NO intel driver updates had been made after OS installation.

Hello,
I'll re-phrase my post so that it might be easier for you to answer:

Should I decide to re-install everything (this time disconnecting my third spare 1Tb drive during the process), what is the correct procedure to perform partition alignment with diskpart prior to OS installation ?
1 - format the two 2Tb drives which will form the RAID0 array first, and then create the array
2 - create the array first and then format the single disks
3 - create ALL partitions after the array is created and the align all partitions separately
4 - whichever, as the combinations by which the whole process can be performed are far too many for me to list here

any answer appreciated, then I can proceed to the next step and test newer RST drivers.

In the meantime these are my answers to Fernando:

Zitat von Fernando im Beitrag #4

---

Here are some questions:
1. Which Intel RAID driver versions did you try?
2. Which sort of Intel RST driver packages (the "pure" driver or the complete Drivers & Software Set) did you install?
3. If you ever had installed a complete Intel RST Drivers & Software Set, did you uninstall the Intel RST Software from within the Control Panel, before you installed any other Intel RST RAID driver (that has to be done everytime!)?

---

1. Intel RST AHCI/RAID Drivers & Software Set v16.5.5.1040 WHQL - matching my Intel RAID ROM/EFI BIOS module: v16.5.0.3492
   Intel RST AHCI/RAID Drivers & Software Set v16.7.10.1030 WHQL
   Intel RST AHCI/RAID Drivers & Software Set v16.8.0.1000 WHQL
   Intel RST AHCI/RAID Drivers & Software Set v17.0.1.1075
2. always the complete Driver & Software Set
3. Yes. Always uninstalled. Only time I didn't do that, I couldn't boot back into Window and had to re-install from scratch.

Thank you very much Fernando!
I indeed got the entry that alignment is ok.
Now I should go ahead and try updating storage drivers, but I'm scared as hell!

thx again.
As I said the system is now running fine WITHOUT intel storage driver updates, so it would probably be wise to leave it as it is.
BIOS is most recent and settings checked multiple times throughout (done extensive testing on this when I was trying to isolate the cause of the issue).

I'll create a system restore point, try to install the latest drivers and see how it goes.

Hi, thought I'd leave some feedback.
Ran OS flawlessly until yesterday, when I took the plunge and took another chance at updating intel RST drivers. Installed the latest version from intel's site, as also suggested by their software update utility.

Needles to say the system stuttering appeared immediately.
I reverted to the driver version natively installed by Win10 1809.

Should I give the latest 15.x branch a try or just forget about it?

Ok, thanks Fernando.
Still have a couple of questions when you have the time.

- While I had the latest RST drivers installed, I ran through the tweaks available in the RAID console. I reckon those tweaks are still effective even after uninstalling the console and reverting to older drivers, right?

- Although after "downgrading" device manager lists Intel RST v15.44.0.1010, a utility I use (Sysinternals' Autorun) still reports that two iaStor... 16.8.0.1000 drivers are loaded in the system. Should this be a matter of concern?


Thanks for your help. I admit I'd love to know why the latest iterations of the intel RST drivers are not playing nice with my system.