z420 Samsung SSD

[paintballer4lfe]

So i thought this was going to be easy and straight forward since we have a ton of different drivers and versions on our network drives. But i cannot find a driver that will work with my Windows 10 installer.

I only have one Samsung Evo SSD drive hooked up and the BIOS are set to AHCI mode.
I've tried all Intel RST and RSTe drivers from Intel and the official HP driver version from thre support page.
I also tried drivers part of RSTe that were not "compatible" with my hardware setup.

My question is why can i not find a working driver for Windows 10 Pro x64 installer anywhere from Intel or HP.

I also am wondering what port should i have the SSD in, the one port that the cD/DVD drive is in on the side or the normal SATA slots under the PCI slots.

I had the SSD in the side slot with the CD/DVD drive and it listed the drive and everything but the installer would not create/modify the partitions on the drive, it only listed it for some reason.

Any help with what driver or what port to have it in to get it to work would be appreciated!

[MtothaJ]

If this is a standard 2.5" Samsung 850 EVO drive you want to make sure that it is connected to one of the two dark grey SATA3 ports else you will not be benefiting from full speed.

Also if you want RST you need to set yur bios to RAID+AHCI, not just AHCI. 

[paintballer4lfe]

Alright that worked out perfectly for the driver issue.

However the drive itself is still under performing and the Samsung Magician is saying that the drive is NOT in AHCI mode which i think is also another reason why i'm getting 284 read and 272 write which is slow for this drive correct?

I also have setup for maximum performance with magician as well so i am still confused why it is performing slower then it should.

[MtothaJ]

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@paintballer4lfe wrote:

Alright that worked out perfectly for the driver issue.

However the drive itself is still under performing and the Samsung Magician is saying that the drive is NOT in AHCI mode which i think is also another reason why i'm getting 284 read and 272 write which is slow for this drive correct?

I also have setup for maximum performance with magician as well so i am still confused why it is performing slower then it should.

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The speeds you are getting seems to indicate SATA 2 and not SATA 3 speed - double check you are plugged into the correct port. Also you can run a disk benchmark such as Crystal Disk just to verify the speeds you are getting.

As for AHCI and Samsung Magician, there was an issue with the older versions where it would incorrectly state that AHCI was disabled when in fact it was enabled. Then again it is possibe that when installing Windows your bios was set to IDE and not AHCI and that is the reason. In that case the recommended approach is to reinstall Windows - there are ways of switching from IDE to AHCI without a reinstall but they are pretty complicated and do not always produce the intended results.

[paintballer4lfe]

Yeah that's the weird part about this z420, it is literally in the SAT3 plug.

I go into the BIOS the storage device config list Hard Disk under SATA3 and the CD/DVD drive is listed under SATA2.

Under Storage Options the removable media boot is set to enable and the SATA Mode is set to RAID+AHCI.

I am stumped as to why i am getting such slow speeds, i did try other bechmark tools and they all listed the same speeds.

My BIOS Version is 3.91 if that makes a difference.

[MtothaJ]

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@paintballer4lfe wrote:

Yeah that's the weird part about this z420, it is literally in the SAT3 plug.

I go into the BIOS the storage device config list Hard Disk under SATA3 and the CD/DVD drive is listed under SATA2.

Under Storage Options the removable media boot is set to enable and the SATA Mode is set to RAID+AHCI.

I am stumped as to why i am getting such slow speeds, i did try other bechmark tools and they all listed the same speeds.

My BIOS Version is 3.91 if that makes a difference.

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I am also on 3.91 bios, and before upgrading to the Samsung 950 Pro NVMe drive I had a 850 EVO Sata drive - this was performing at full speed. It is not a driver issue, since the Sata drives just use the standard Windows 10 drivers.

I would go for a full clean install of Win 10 in UEFI mode and see if that clears up the AHCI issue. The other thing you can check is the Sata cable - a bit of a long shot, but maybe try changing it for a new one where it explicitly states it supports SATA3?

[paintballer4lfe]

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@MtothaJ wrote:

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@paintballer4lfe wrote:

Yeah that's the weird part about this z420, it is literally in the SAT3 plug.

I go into the BIOS the storage device config list Hard Disk under SATA3 and the CD/DVD drive is listed under SATA2.

Under Storage Options the removable media boot is set to enable and the SATA Mode is set to RAID+AHCI.

I am stumped as to why i am getting such slow speeds, i did try other bechmark tools and they all listed the same speeds.

My BIOS Version is 3.91 if that makes a difference.

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I am also on 3.91 bios, and before upgrading to the Samsung 950 Pro NVMe drive I had a 850 EVO Sata drive - this was performing at full speed. It is not a driver issue, since the Sata drives just use the standard Windows 10 drivers.

I would go for a full clean install of Win 10 in UEFI mode and see if that clears up the AHCI issue. The other thing you can check is the Sata cable - a bit of a long shot, but maybe try changing it for a new one where it explicitly states it supports SATA3?

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Dude.......you have NVMe, i'm pretty jealous not gunna lie. But yeah this is actually a completely fresh new clean install of Windows 10 Pro using UEFI. I've reinstalled it numerous times trying to figure out why it will not function at it's normal speeds.

The cable i'm using is a SATA 6GB/s StarTech cable, which may be the issue (StarTech is junk most of the time), i'll swap it out when i get some time today.

And the drivers are actually not the generic windows drivers they are the offical Intel RSTe driver for SATA RAID is what got the drive to show and finally work this last time around.

I'll post an update here soon after i swap this junky cable out and retest.
I also have low hopes since HP's always have issues with our setups for some reason.

[MtothaJ]

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paintballer4lfe wrote:

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Dude.......you have NVMe, i'm pretty jealous not gunna lie. But yeah this is actually a completely fresh new clean install of Windows 10 Pro using UEFI. I've reinstalled it numerous times trying to figure out why it will not function at it's normal speeds.

The cable i'm using is a SATA 6GB/s StarTech cable, which may be the issue (StarTech is junk most of the time), i'll swap it out when i get some time today.

And the drivers are actually not the generic windows drivers they are the offical Intel RSTe driver for SATA RAID is what got the drive to show and finally work this last time around.

I'll post an update here soon after i swap this junky cable out and retest.
I also have low hopes since HP's always have issues with our setups for some reason.

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Not really holding much hope for the cable to be the culprit here but its worth a try.

There are various freeware system analysis programs such as Speccy, HWinfo or even HP's own Performance Advisor, which should show upon drilling down to the disk i) the drives max possible speed e.g. SATA3 and ii) what speed its running at. Both would be interesting to know for troubleshooting purposes. THe other thing to do would be to test a different SSD if you have one handy or can borrow one.

As for the NVMe I say it definietly a nice speed boost but in the case of the Samsung it comes at quite a high price. That said NVMe drive prices are falling (the Intel 600p drives look to offer good value) and speeds are increasing (e.g. Patriot Hellfire  with 3000/2200 MB/s while still being cheaper than the Samsung).

I can confirm that the Samsung 950 Pro works fine in our Z420 machines as a boot drive but have not tested the others so one needs to do their research accordingly before buying. I am just using a cheap PCIe to m.2 adapter in the PCIe 3.0 x8 slot, also works fine in the second PCIe 3.0 x16 slot. 

Depending on how much RAM you have it may also be worthwhile to set up a RAM drive - it will save some wear and tear on the SSD and offer much higher speeds - pretty useful when downloading installers and playing around with large files or doing various operations on a large group of smaller files.

[paintballer4lfe]

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@MtothaJ wrote:

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@paintballer4lfe wrote:

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Dude.......you have NVMe, i'm pretty jealous not gunna lie. But yeah this is actually a completely fresh new clean install of Windows 10 Pro using UEFI. I've reinstalled it numerous times trying to figure out why it will not function at it's normal speeds.

The cable i'm using is a SATA 6GB/s StarTech cable, which may be the issue (StarTech is junk most of the time), i'll swap it out when i get some time today.

And the drivers are actually not the generic windows drivers they are the offical Intel RSTe driver for SATA RAID is what got the drive to show and finally work this last time around.

I'll post an update here soon after i swap this junky cable out and retest.
I also have low hopes since HP's always have issues with our setups for some reason.

---

Not really holding much hope for the cable to be the culprit here but its worth a try.

There are various freeware system analysis programs such as Speccy, HWinfo or even HP's own Performance Advisor, which should show upon drilling down to the disk i) the drives max possible speed e.g. SATA3 and ii) what speed its running at. Both would be interesting to know for troubleshooting purposes. THe other thing to do would be to test a different SSD if you have one handy or can borrow one.

As for the NVMe I say it definietly a nice speed boost but in the case of the Samsung it comes at quite a high price. That said NVMe drive prices are falling (the Intel 600p drives look to offer good value) and speeds are increasing (e.g. Patriot Hellfire  with 3000/2200 MB/s while still being cheaper than the Samsung).

I can confirm that the Samsung 950 Pro works fine in our Z420 machines as a boot drive but have not tested the others so one needs to do their research accordingly before buying. I am just using a cheap PCIe to m.2 adapter in the PCIe 3.0 x8 slot, also works fine in the second PCIe 3.0 x16 slot. 

Depending on how much RAM you have it may also be worthwhile to set up a RAM drive - it will save some wear and tear on the SSD and offer much higher speeds - pretty useful when downloading installers and playing around with large files or doing various operations on a large group of smaller files.

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So beleive it or not the crappy StarTech cable was the reason why i was getting slow speeds. It is a 6GB/s SATA3 cable put for some reason it was only perofming as a SATA2. I always knew they made junk cables i shouldnt have bothered with it. I have a working 6GB/s cable now and everything is fast and where it should be!!

[MtothaJ · Accepted solution]

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@paintballer4lfe wrote:

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So beleive it or not the crappy StarTech cable was the reason why i was getting slow speeds. It is a 6GB/s SATA3 cable put for some reason it was only perofming as a SATA2. I always knew they made junk cables i shouldnt have bothered with it. I have a working 6GB/s cable now and everything is fast and where it should be!!

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Excellent, glad its sorted! Guess this goes to show that not all cables are made equal and it does matter to use a quality one.