Serious problems with Intel Rapid Storage and Corsair Force GS 360 GB

Hi all,

 

Here's the thing:

 

Clean clean install, brand new build - installing Win7 Ultimate 64bit, chipset drivers, usb, MEI, and finally intel RST - as soon as I restart, BAM the SSD doesn't exist in the BIOS.

 

if I shut down the system completely and turn on, the SSD shows on the bios and boots, but gets hung on windows logo (no bsod though).

 

best result I could achieve so far, is by downloading a newer RST driver directly from intel (instead of from Asus, I have a Z87-C board), which still makes the SSD disappear from BIOS every two restarts, but manages to load windows (in a very slow fashion, not very SSD like at all).

 

I flashed the BIOS to the latest version from Asus. I also did secure erase of the SSD and by now have probably reinstalled win7 3-4 times...

 

I managed to get everything up and running WITHOUT installing RST at all, but I really don't like the performance I get from both SSD and the HDD and I thought RST might help, since I had it installed on my previous computer (different hardware & specs)*EDIT) with no problems at all (and was happy with the performance)

 

Please help! and if any more information is needed, please let me know

 

Thanks for reading this :)

Did you update to the most recent firmware for your SSD?

Hi Yellowbeard, thanks for the fast reply :)

 

I was just about to edit my post and to add that the SSD drive came with firmware version 5.20 out of the box, and after checking with SSD toolbox it seems that there isn't anything newer than what I already have..

http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124884

Thanks again, that was super fast and very kind of you :)

 

Downloading the update right now, will report back with results. fingers crossed ;-)

Ok, good news! did a couple of restarts and everything seems to be in order (and showing up in BIOS)

 

best thing is - performance! now it finally feels like an SSD, and my HDD also performs much better thanks to RST I guess...

 

hope nothing fails again, because I plan to reinstall win7 again to have a really clean and working system, but till then - BIG THANK YOU :) I spent a really good portion of this *****n day trying to figure out a solution for this issue. :)

Did you do a benchmark test with ATTO (http://www.attotech.com/disk-benchmark/) to test its speed I have issues with mine

Hey Frank,

 

Believe it or not, I think that before my problem was fixed, the ATTO tests looked better, especially in the range of 0.5 to 16.0Kb - Having said that, the actual performance was terrible :)

 

Here's the latest test (after updating the firmware) for the sake of research :)

 

Personally, I trust my gut feeling and not some synthetic benchmarks - performance now is way better, regardless of what this test says :sunglasse