Intel Pulls RSTe Drivers For Haswell-E X99 Platform Due To Issues

Intel has reportedly removed it’s latest Rapid Storage Technology drivers (RSTe Version 4.1.0.1046) that allowed Intel X99 motherboards to support up to ten SATA III 6Gbps drives at a time. That leaves Intel X99 owners only the ability to download and use Intel RST 13.1 ( V13.1.0.1058) client storage drivers that support up to 6 ports (1 SATA controller). This is because RST driver version 13.1 came out long before the Intel X99 platform was released and was not optimized for Intel X99 boards. According to the German publication Heise.de they had a conversation with ASUS and discovered that the driver was withdrawn because it did not support the Serial ATA TRIM command for SSDs striped in a RAID 0 array. We are guessing that the older driver they rolled back to does, but it only makes use of up to six SATA ports, which means the other ports are not accessible through RSTe and they will not benefit from Intel’s SATA link power management features. We also know that Intel RST 13.1 client storage drivers are not a validated configuration by Intel. Intel has not given any guidance on what existing users should do that already have Intel RSTe version 4.1.0.1046 drivers installed.

Legit Reviews reached out to Intel for confirmation of this driver removal and if they were planning on releasing updated RSTe drivers for Intel X99 platforms and have not received an e-mail back since asking about four hours ago. We also contacted ASUS USA and they were not aware of the driver removal and were unable to get an answer from ASUS Taiwan since they are closed for the weekend.

Update 12/15/2014: We have received an update from ASUS and it appears this really isn’t a story at all.

1) X79 was the last platform to support IRSTe – X99 has never supported IRSTe.

2) IRST 13.1 is the latest driver version for X99. There are updates to IRST in progress, but they are still under validation – these have nothing to do with IRSTe of course.

3) TRIM has been supported on RAID0 volumes since IRST 11.0.

4) RAID/TRIM is supported by the platform on the current release driver on the ports that are directly connected to the PCH. Exactly the same since the platform launched.

The good news is that any ports beyond the six supported by Intel will be recognized by the Windows Internal AHCI controller driver just like all are before Intel RSTe drivers are installed. We’ll keep you updated on this news post if we hear back from ASUS or Intel with more information about the RSTe driver issue on Intel X99.