W11 SAS controller missing

[R_A_L]

I have installed Win 11 in legacy mode (mbr) on my Z420 - 2697v2 with bootblock - using Rufus & fully updated with all drivers (some as optional updates) except the SAS one. The 3 drives (2 at sata 3 & one storage hdd at 3gb) are all recognised as sata devices however & the write/read speed s on the C disc (win 11) are 551/541 mbs respectively so should I leave as is all seems to function ok or persist in trying to update it? What if any are the gains to be expected if corrected?   The bios is set as Raid / Sata / AHCI etc but onv was in usb initially to install the OS

Any advice appreciated!!! Many thanks 

[SDH]

You mention 2 of your drives are SATAIII and one is SATAII.

Hopefully at least your boot drive is a SATAIII SSD? We run a number of these workstations under W11Pro and also don't use SAS drives at all. When you look at the drive ports along the bottom front area you'll see two gray ones to the far right of the main line, and the rest are white down on that edge. Then, above are some black ones.

The two gray ones are SATAIII... you want your SATAIII boot/applications attached to the far right gray one (SATA0 port). You want your next SATAIII drive attached to the next gray one (SATA1 port). You want your documents SATAII drive attached to a black one higher up. I'd pick SATA2 port. You want your slow optical drive cable attached to another of the black SATAII ports. I'd pick the highest one towards the front.

HP has already paid Intel a licensing fee to use the non-free RSTe ("e" means enterprise) storage drivers on your workstation so it is legit to upgrade to those if you wish). I think if those were not licensed they would not work. That would get you SAS and RAID software plus its GUI. I do know it used to be critical to have BIOS set to RAID + AHCI which was the advice from Intel and HP even if you'd never use RAID. At least in W7Pro64 you'd not get some of the drivers that allowed SATA/NVMe SSDs to work at their best if SATA emulation was set in BIOS to IDE.

[R_A_L]

Thank you for your reply. Yes the both the  W11 Boot drive & W10 boot drives are attached to the black 6gb Sata111 ports & operate near at their maximum read/write speeds - the WD is 551/543 & the slightly old Samsung 535/510 mbs. The 1tb Storage is a hdd with a top speed of around 110mb read anyway so its on a grey 3gb port. 

I did update an advised SAS driver from advice in another post & this still didnt show up on dev manager but did boost the read on the west dig boot drive from 546 to 551 so maybe I'll just quit while I'm ahead!   Thanks again though!  🤟🖖👍

[DGroves]

the Intel RST and RSTe drivers are Free, there is no money exchanged between  intel and the OEM's who bundle the drivers

which makes sense since the above drivers  are part of the Intel chipset package that motherboard makers use to create a motherboard

as long as they follow the listed restrictions intel posts with the drivers users can use/modify them at will and most system venders post these drivers on their websites along with Intel posting current products driver support

Microsoft is unable to include every driver that exists or drivers for products released after the  OS's release

this is why the intel C600 series chip's need specific "RSTe" drivers to enable the chipsets "SCU" C602/612 sata ports and  a Inf driver/descriptor file to describe the chips internal abilities (the board does also have 2 std Intel SATA ports)

the z420 and z440 workstations do not come with a onboard LSI SAS/SATA controller chip like the z8x0 systems do, as such they use a add in pci-e SAS/SATA card, and depending on the card used a driver may need to be provided

last, AHCI+Raid is the proper bios setting for 99.99% of users do not change it as doing so will provide suboptimal results

[SDH · Accepted solution]

To the OP... Thanks, but I think you've got it wrong. There are only two SATA ports on the Z420/Z620 motherboards that run at max of 6 Gbps, and those are the gray plastic ones at the bottom front corner of the motherboard. On the diagram below those both are seen under #15. You refer to the black plastic SATA ports (higher up) as having that fast speed, but those actually are half that speed. See those 4 ports under #14 in the motherboard diagram below, listed by HP as 3 Gbps. Finally, there are 4 added white plastic "SCU" ports under #17, and those also are stated by HP to also run at the slower 3Gbps speed.

Only 2 SATA ports are 6 Gbps...

To DGroves... thanks much, I did not know that about Intel including rights to use the advanced software if one bought the chipset. Makes sense. I bet a lot of clients are not using that right.

[R_A_L]

Hello again - thanks to both for your replies. Sorry I've described it wrong. I do indeed have the boot drives installed in the bottom grey ports & the storage in one of the lower black ones (the dvdrw drive is in one of the side black sockets - the other is now blocked by the nvidia gtx 970 which just squeaks in).

When connected to the slower sockets the transfer speed of the ssds drops to a predictable half rate.

Despite the SAS W11 niggle (it's present in W10) the used Z420 & the excellent & knowledgeable support community is proving a great choice to me as an uograde base since my venerable, reliable but unexpandable q6600 & sata 2 / 8gb memory build on an Asrock P45TS since 2009 got just too limiting. 

Thanks once again to all for your detailed! help & information.