Rapid Storage Technology
Intel® RST, RAID
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DSA wants to install RST driver for older platform

pokornee
Beginner
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I'm running Win10 Pro on a Dell Latitude 5520 with 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-1135G7 processor.

When I run Intel® Driver & Support Assistant (DSA) on Firefox browser, it wants to install 'Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) User Interface and Driver for Intel® 5th/6th Generation Platforms'.

Description:
This download installs the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) RAID driver version 14.8.16.1063.
Version: 14.8.16.1063

Release date: April 15, 2017

Size: 13.37 MB

Question: why does DSA want to install a driver for Intel® 5th/6th Generation Platforms while it's running on a 11th generation platform? Obviously, I did not click the 'Install' button.

Can someone please explain and/or advise re this matter? Should I go ahead and install anyway? Much appreciate any replies!  Thx, Rob

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megan3000
Valued Contributor I
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In my opinion, Dell is a great manufacturer; however, it has the unnecessary (and I'd say bad as well) practice of installing a lot of software and tools that are not needed, one of them is Intel RST. Others manufacturer also has this bad habit (HP, Lenovo, and so...)

 

First question you need to ask yourself is: Do you have any RAID configuration or are you using Intel optane memory?

If the answer is no, then I would say that you don't need the driver/tool, neither the one offered by DSA nor the one that came preinstalled by Dell...

Probably, when you purchased the laptop, it came with some instance of the Intel RST software and driver pre-installed and now DSA detects that there is an "RST software/driver component" and thus, it offers an update... But if you don't have RAID or optane, my opinion is you don't need the update... plus, updating such as update might lead to other unforeseen issues (RST is known for messing/corrupting files and registry).

People really need to understand that just because you are offered with an update, you don't need to hurry and install it... Remember this phrase: if it ain't broke, don't fix it !!

 

It is clear that if you don't have RAID (or SSD acceleration in the past, now replaced by Optane) you don't need the driver/UI tool. However, it is true that there have been debates for a long time about the "beneficts" of having this driver despite it is not required... However, I never experienced such as "benefits" and many people think the same...

Is Intel Rapid Storage Technology needed?

Plus, I believe those "benefits" would have applied for scenarios with HDD or old SSDs, but considering the very modern systems that are available today (as yours with 11th Gen CPU) most of them now come with modern and fast drives in M.2 format and using NVMe/PCIe and fast write/read speeds and improvement in power consumption...

I don't use RST software/driver on any of my systems that don't have RAID configured and they perform very well and have no issues at all, this includes PC desktops and laptops. I even has a Lenovo laptop with the same CPU as yours i5-1135G7 and it works great.  The same applies to my AMD PC, I have a very fast M.2 NVMe drive and SSDs for storage of games and VMs and it performs very well...

 

Now, if you really need RST UI and the driver (or if you still want to have it for whatever reason), you should get the updates from dell's website or use the driver update tool by dell: SupportAssist for home PCs.

You will have more certainty that you would get the proper update, instead of relying on DSA which is generic (offers only generic drivers)...

dsa.jpg

 

As a side note, I never use those "automatic driver update tools", neither the one provided by the manufacturer nor (and specially nor) the generic ones like DSA... I prefer to check my drivers directly from the manufacturers' website, read readme files, installation instructions, key considerations, fixes, known issues, etc.. and then decide if I apply the update or not...

In fact, every time I get a new system "pre-configured" by the manufacturer, I delete the original partitions and perform a fresh install to get rid of the unnecessary software, settings, etc, and install it and configure as I want... but that is another topic and most of the users are not interested or willing to go through that path...

 

Megan♥

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3 Replies
megan3000
Valued Contributor I
1,544 Views

In my opinion, Dell is a great manufacturer; however, it has the unnecessary (and I'd say bad as well) practice of installing a lot of software and tools that are not needed, one of them is Intel RST. Others manufacturer also has this bad habit (HP, Lenovo, and so...)

 

First question you need to ask yourself is: Do you have any RAID configuration or are you using Intel optane memory?

If the answer is no, then I would say that you don't need the driver/tool, neither the one offered by DSA nor the one that came preinstalled by Dell...

Probably, when you purchased the laptop, it came with some instance of the Intel RST software and driver pre-installed and now DSA detects that there is an "RST software/driver component" and thus, it offers an update... But if you don't have RAID or optane, my opinion is you don't need the update... plus, updating such as update might lead to other unforeseen issues (RST is known for messing/corrupting files and registry).

People really need to understand that just because you are offered with an update, you don't need to hurry and install it... Remember this phrase: if it ain't broke, don't fix it !!

 

It is clear that if you don't have RAID (or SSD acceleration in the past, now replaced by Optane) you don't need the driver/UI tool. However, it is true that there have been debates for a long time about the "beneficts" of having this driver despite it is not required... However, I never experienced such as "benefits" and many people think the same...

Is Intel Rapid Storage Technology needed?

Plus, I believe those "benefits" would have applied for scenarios with HDD or old SSDs, but considering the very modern systems that are available today (as yours with 11th Gen CPU) most of them now come with modern and fast drives in M.2 format and using NVMe/PCIe and fast write/read speeds and improvement in power consumption...

I don't use RST software/driver on any of my systems that don't have RAID configured and they perform very well and have no issues at all, this includes PC desktops and laptops. I even has a Lenovo laptop with the same CPU as yours i5-1135G7 and it works great.  The same applies to my AMD PC, I have a very fast M.2 NVMe drive and SSDs for storage of games and VMs and it performs very well...

 

Now, if you really need RST UI and the driver (or if you still want to have it for whatever reason), you should get the updates from dell's website or use the driver update tool by dell: SupportAssist for home PCs.

You will have more certainty that you would get the proper update, instead of relying on DSA which is generic (offers only generic drivers)...

dsa.jpg

 

As a side note, I never use those "automatic driver update tools", neither the one provided by the manufacturer nor (and specially nor) the generic ones like DSA... I prefer to check my drivers directly from the manufacturers' website, read readme files, installation instructions, key considerations, fixes, known issues, etc.. and then decide if I apply the update or not...

In fact, every time I get a new system "pre-configured" by the manufacturer, I delete the original partitions and perform a fresh install to get rid of the unnecessary software, settings, etc, and install it and configure as I want... but that is another topic and most of the users are not interested or willing to go through that path...

 

Megan♥

pokornee
Beginner
1,485 Views

Thank you Megan for that absolutely awesome reply!

No, I don't have either RAID configured or Optane on my system.

Bottom line, after reading your very thorough missive, I decided to just uninstall RST (v14.5.2.1088) from my system. The uninstall went fine and I verified that the RST-associated folder & files were removed. I then re-booted my system with no problem and am now running A-OK.

DSA now says "Your Intel® drivers and software are up to date."

FYI, I purchased my Dell Latitude 5520 in Dec 2021. I then cloned my prior Win10 SSD (containing all partitions) from my "old" laptop to a new SSD which I then installed in the new Dell laptop. Thus, RST (and other "stuff") were carried-over to my new system. How or why RST was ever installed I do not know. Most likely it was pre-installed by the vendor (HP) when I purchased the laptop back in 2015. 

In any case, as far as I can tell, I'm good to go.

Thanks again for your expert assistance, I learned a lot!  Rob

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megan3000
Valued Contributor I
1,482 Views

Hi Rob... sure!, my pleasure... glad to help

take care

Megan♥

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