Dyslexic Intel RSTe Driver

I encounter one problem after another running Windows 8 and Server 2012 on the dual Xeon E5 Intel C600 chipset based SuperMicro 7047A-T and 7047A-73 SuperWorkstation machines. I will say that this is really not representative of my Windows 8 experience in general, as all other machines I installed on worked fine with the in-box drivers.

The C602 includes the Intel Storage Controller Unit (SCU) SATA / SAS controller. Windows 8 and Server 2012 do not include in-box drivers for the SCU. The SCU drivers are part of the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Enterprise (RSTe) driver set. Note that the RSTe and RST drivers are different and not compatible with one another. When you install the full RSTe package, it includes SCU drivers for the SCU RAID controller, AHCI drivers for the SATA controller, and the Windows RST management application.

A clean install of Windows 8 will use the in-box drivers for the SATA controller. In the image below you can see the Intel 520 Series 480GB SSD drive show up with the correct model number:

Device.Manager.Win8

After installing RSTe (3.2.0.1132, 3.2.0.1134), the 4TB Hitachi drives attached to the SCU show up, but the model numbers of the drives, including the SSD drive attached to the SATA port, are now messed up:

Device.Manager.RSTe

The drive hardware identifiers are correct, but the friendly name is not:

Intel.SSD.Hardware

Intel.SSD.Friendly

It appears that the text BYTE’s are WORD swapped, i.e. ABCD becomes BADC.

The driver is also not functional, attempting to create a storage spaces pool using the Hitachi drives hangs forever, with no drive activity, requiring a hard power cycle:

Storage.Pool

And lastly, the Intel SSD Toolbox 3.0.3 is not compatible with Windows 8:

SSD.Toolbox

The clock is ticking for Windows Server 2012 (4 September, 1 day left) and Windows 8 (26 October, 7 weeks left) general availability, I can only hope compatible drivers, firmware, and utilities are forthcoming.

 

[Update: 4 September 2012]
SuperMicro posted updated RSTe drivers (package v3.5.0.1101, driver v3.5.0.1096). This driver set resolves the hang during storage space creation, but the drive names are still messed up.

4 Comments

  1. ‘Programmer dyslexia’ is common, at least for me. When I’m coding, I forget how to write English (and it is my native language ;p). Some of the typos in my software is just awful.

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  2. Pieter says:

    SuperMicro posted updated drivers, RSTe v3.5.0.1101, that includes driver version 3.5.0.1096. This driver set resolves the failure to create a storage space, but the drive names are still messed up.
    ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SCU/Intel_PCH_SCU_Romley/Management/3.5.0.1101/

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  3. I want to buy the SuperMicro 5037a-i which is based on the X9SRA.
    I understand the 602 chipset is windows 2012 supported but is the raid windows 2012 supported?
    So can I create a raid in the BIOS and install windows 2012 on this raid set?

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