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Intel RST VMD Controller A77F preventing monitoring apps from detecting Transfer Mode

hexaae
New Contributor II
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Please can you update "Intel RST VMD Controller A77F" driver which is preventing monitoring apps and SSD/NVMe official management tools to detect Transfer Mode and Interface type under Windows 11?

I tried different combinations of drives and their official softwares (Lexar, SKHynix, SanDisk) and it's always the same: they can't detect Transfer Mode or Interface type when the PC is using "Intel RST VMD Controller A77F" driver in BIOS/UEFI+Windows. Can this be fixed with a new driver update?

I have an ASUS SCAR 18 with driver "Intel RST VMD Controller A77F" 20.0.0.1038, no RAID, but it's not limited to this laptop as I've read the same from other users with different brands/models. Switching to NVMe default internal Windows driver they all work fine again.

 

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7 Replies
RandyT_Intel
Moderator
744 Views

Hello hexaae,

 

Thank you for reaching out to us regarding the issue you’re experiencing with your system. To better assist you, I need to gather some additional information. Could you please answer the following questions? 

 

  • Has this issue occurred before? 
  • Can you please run the System Support Utility (SSU) and share the logs with me? 
  •  Have you made any changes to the BIOS/UEFI settings related to storage or RAID configurations? If so, what settings are currently enabled?
  • Besides the detection issue, have you noticed any impact on the performance or stability of your system when using the "Intel RST VMD Controller A77F" driver?
  • Are there any error messages or logs generated by the monitoring apps or SSD/NVMe management tools when they fail to detect the Transfer Mode and Interface type? If so, can you share those logs?

 

While I'm waiting for your answer, kindly check this article as it seems related to the issue you are encountering. Let me know if you find this helpful or not so I can look for alternatives.

 

I also highly advise consulting your system vendor or manufacturer, as this is an OEM system. They have tailored support to address this matter 

 

Providing this information will help me diagnose the system more accurately and check for available solutions. Thank you for your cooperation, and I look forward to your response. 

 

Best regards, 

 

Randy T. 

Intel Customer Support Technician

 

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hexaae
New Contributor II
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Consider I have VMD enabled by default in the BIOS but the disks are NOT in RAID. Just separate disks. 

  • It's an issue by driver design reproducible on all laptops coming with Intel RST VMD A77F as default storage driver (RAID or not, VMD BIOS option = enabled), instead of NVMe (VMD BIOS option = disabled)
  • No need of SSU, it's not system/HW specific but a generic problem on any brand and different hw, with this device driver and VMD enabled (RAID or not)
  • Yes, there is an impact with system Latency when the system is configured to use VMD driver, instead of Windows built-in NVMe device driver, well documented on reddit and many forums from users who changed from VMD --> NVMe Windows built-in driver and noticed latency spikes (with LatencyMon Tool) disappeared
  • No there is no error. They simply fail and report no info in those fields when the NVMe is connected with VMD BIOS option=ON. This happens with official software from Samsung, SanDisk, Lexar, and independent Windows drive monitoring tools like in the pic above (Crystal DiskInfo)

To recap and better make you understand the issue (I'm sorry if wasn't clear):

- take a modern laptop (ASUS, MSI, ACER...) coming with a pair of NVMe SSD slots, and BIOS at default with Intel RST VMD driver, with VMD=ON (not necessary in RAID, this is important)

- install 1-2 NVMe drives in these laptops together with their offical management tools (SanDisk, Samsung, Lexar... whatever)

these tools will display no info regarding Transfer Mode and Interface type.

Instead, if you switch VMD BIOS option = OFF, and Windows to use its std NVMe driver, these softwares will correctly detect Transfer Mode and Interface type.

Wondering if Intel software engineers responsible for the Intel RST VMD A77F driver, could make it compatible with these (official) disk softwares, to correctly display also those missing info, when VMD BIOS option = ON + Windows drivers set to Intel RST VMD.

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n_scott_pearson
Super User
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You can wait for an official answer through Randy. In the meantime, I will venture to say, nope, not ever going to be fixed. Why? Because the Intel Storage driver utilizes a totally different IOCTL protocol than that used by the standard storage driver - and it has done so for, oh, some 20-odd years! IMHO, considering that the interface has existed for this long, it is a failure on the part of the developers of these apps to implement support for this interface. Bottom line, I personally think that you should be complaining to those app developers, not Intel.

You may not like my answer - and you can indeed wait for Intel to give you an official response - but it is what it is and I personally don't think the answer will be any better. If you are not using RAID then you do not need - and indeed should not have - the VMD controller enabled. End of story. I personally would also be complaining to the motherboard BIOS developer that their default is just plain wrong.

Just saying,

...S

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hexaae
New Contributor II
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Yes, I imagined that, too. And it is really strange that none of these (official) software supports this widespread Intel driver... and both Intel and the disk drives manufacturers have never bothered about it.

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RandyT_Intel
Moderator
519 Views

Hello hexaae,


Here's an update. The monitoring app is currently unable to retrieve the "Transfer Mode" under VMD due to an issue with the API call. To resolve this issue, I recommend contacting the app developer directly.


Best regards, 


Randy T. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 


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hexaae
New Contributor II
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Crystal Disk Info, Lexar DiskMaster, SandDisk Dashboard, Samsung Magician... they are all buggy due to "an issue with the API call"?

Can you provide some code example for a correct API call? Shouldn't be Intel to help them to provide a better support to your Intel VMD driver?

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n_scott_pearson
Super User
488 Views

Yes, they've been aware of this deficiency for a long time and never did anything about it.

I published an Open-Source SDK that included sample code for this, but this was a good 15 years ago (I've been retired from Intel for 10 years now) and thus it is unlikely that is useable as-is (it certainly didn't have any support for, or testing with, NVMe SSDs).

I found a copy of this SDK (which was actually for Intel Quiet System Technology (QST)) here: https://github.com/gigaplex/Intel_QST_SDK. Look in the SRC\Libraries\Windows folder. The sample code for dealing with the CSMI protocol are the files named CSMI*.*. These are built into the libSMART library, which provided support for extracting S.M.A.R.T. data from all storage drives.

Have at it,

...S

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