Rapid Storage Technology
Intel® RST, RAID
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Rapid Storage Technology interferes with SMART data of hard drives

amous3
New Contributor I
2,247 Views

I installed Rapid Storage Technology from the motherboard CDROM to solve a problem with wiping (secure erase) a 530 SSD. It fixed the problem, but then I started WD's Lifeguard to verify SMART status of my hard drives. Before RST, all drives, even Intel SSDs, would display SMART status. But after RST, SMART status was replaced by a question mark. I just uninstalled RST and re-verified SMART status via Lifeguard, and all drives report a checkmark as they did before RST.

Why does RST interfere with SMART data?

If it matters, my PC is DH67CL, i5-2500K, 530 120 GB, and WD Black 500 GB, running W-7 64-bit. Obviously the 530 is the system drive.

UPDATE: I reworked the post.

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Silvia_L_Intel1
Employee
1,081 Views

Baroque-quest, we understand that once a RAID structure is created using the Intel(R) Rapid Storage Technology you cannot view the S.M.A.R.T. values of hard disk drive

S.M.A.R.T. means Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology used to develop disk drives and software systems that automatically monitor and report disk drive health. http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/cs-015002.htm Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) — Unable to View S.M.A.R.T. Values After Setting Up a RAID Volume

If you want to check if the hard drives are OK after loading RST, what you need to do is run a diagnostic.

In order to run a diagnostic it will be necessary to take the disk out of the RAID. Once you finish the diagnostic you can rebuilt the RAID 1 again.

amous3
New Contributor I
1,081 Views

Okay, I guess I did not explain myself very well. This is a system without RAID storage. All it has is an internal 530 used as a system drive and an internal WD Black used for data files. Both are connected via SATA cables to the motherboard. That's why I was confused.

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CFran6
Novice
1,081 Views

Which version of RST is used?

Does Intel SSD Toolbox show SMART info for the 530 SSD?

If no, this version of the RST driver lacks even the standard ATA pass-through (IOCTL_ATA_PASS_THROUGH) functionality which is required to access SMART data.

If yes, try another SMART tool to access SMART info for the HDDs.

Note that some versions of RST driver even supports SMART access for drives in a RAID configuration via CSMI (Common Storage Management Interface). Unfortunately Intel does not document which RST versions provide this functionality.

DDimitrov
Novice
1,081 Views

I can confirm that "Intel SSD Toolbox" ver.3.2.0 does retrieve and display S.M.A.R.T. data for drives in an on-board RAID. The newer version of "Intel SSD Toolbox" does NOT retrieve and display it. I realized that when the newer version was installed by an automatic updater on my computer, so I had to restore the version 3.2.0 from another computer. Another free utility that retrieves and displays S.M.A.R.T. data for drives in a RAID is CrystalDiskInfo.

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CFran6
Novice
1,081 Views

The most recent Intel SSD Toolbox version 3.2.3 works for me with RST 10.8.0.1003. It retrieves SMART data from an 320 SSD in RAID configuration (2xHDD in RAID 1, SSD as cache+data volume).

This also works with CrystalDiskInfo because it implements CSMI.

Another free tool supporting CSMI is smartctl (with optional GUI frontends GSmartControl or HDD Guardian). In above configuration, all functions of smartctl work with the HDDs and SSD (SMART attributes, Self-test logs, Error logs, Device Statistics log, SATA Phy log, Temperature log, run Self-tests, configure AAM/APM/ERC/WCache, ...)

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