Do I need "Intel® Rapid Storage Technology" on my m11x?

I was going through the programs on the taskbar, and one of the icons is Intel® Rapid Storage Technology.

What do I need this for? Seems useless, but it came installed from factory.

R2, i7 with 320g drive.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/492429-m11xr2-problem-technical-question-thread-new-owners-12.html#post6464224

 

Thanks, although it doesn't really answer my question. I don't even have an SSD drive, so I wonder if I need it, will it lower performance if I uninstall it?

Did you guys get it in your R2s also?

 

Well, after reading a little more, it says it improves performance on any AHCl drive so I guess I'll leave it be... for now.

 

Where did you read it?

 

I removed it the moment I turned on my computer.

There is a lot of what I consider to be bloatware on the default M11x installation, to the point where I eventually wiped the hard drive and did a clean install of Windows.

 

Do you know what it does, then?

 

i had mine turned off for awhile then i turned it back on i have no clue what it does lol so i might as well leave it off

 

The program is for hard drive monitoring. It provides health monitoring of your hard drive (through SMART), and RAID array health (which obviously doesn't apply to an M11x).

It's bloatware. Just like the WiFi hotspot finder application that tries to take over Windows's native WiFi hotspot finder. USeless crap that just takes up resources.

 

Sweet, thanks! I looked all over and couldn't find out what it did precisely.

 

Thanks, I've been wondering what it was

I didn't want to compromise my R2's performance. The only thing I uninstalled was the McAfee it came with

 

The Help Docs inside the app say that it has a few useful features, most notably one that allows the hard drive to receive various commands at the same time and that this improves speed/performance.

It did mention other monitoring stuff, but that's mainly why I decided to keep it, until I get a more official answer.

 

From Intel's official page:

So that seems pretty beneficial.

 

Oh, I guess the 'official' answer is better than none.

 

Yes, although I'd like to see some benchmarks or something... But in the meantime, it lives on my machine.

 

Well, the "official" answer is from Intel, who has a vested interest in using their software.

I have never noticed a performance boost when using the Intel Rapid Storage Technology or Intel Storage Matrix Storage Manager. In fact, I have noticed quite the opposite - my bootup times have DECREASED because of the added crap that my computer needs to load.

There are also a lot of very generic claims in the Intel quotes from their page, like:

- "...users can take advantage of enhanced performance and lower power consumption."
- "Through AHCI, storage performance is improved through Native Command Queuing (NCQ)"
- " AHCI also delivers longer battery life with Link Power Management (LPM), which can reduce the power consumption of the chipset and Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive."

These claims are true for some people. For example, you may be running an older version of Windows XP without native SATA support, or are running your SATA drives through IDE emulation mode. Installing drivers that allow you to move to native AHCI mode would definitely allow you to take advantage of some of the nicer features of SATA.

However, those benefits do not apply to owners of the M11x. We do not need RAID support. We do not need health monitoring capabilities. The native SATA drivers that come with Windows 7 already support all of those features such as NCQ and power management. We do not gain any benefit from installing the Intel drivers and application... in fact, we suffer a performance degradation, since that P.O.S app consumes system resources and doesn't tell us anything that we don't already know.

I say, try uninstalling it. If you prefer to keep the application installed, then you can easily re-install it. If you prefer to keep it uninstalled, then just leave it uninstalled and save yourself the system resources.

 

@Kent1146 - Agree 100 percent. Do not install what you do not need!

Take Every Frame Prisoner!

Best Wishes,

StevenX

 

nice advice kent. I'll be turning that off later =]

 

Alright, I decided to try some quick benchmarks with it on and off. I'm definitely not saying these are definitive, since I only ran it once before uninstalling IRST, and perhaps they're within a margin of error. I did run it twice after uninstalling though, and it was the same relationship between scores--better sequential read/write scores with it, better buffered read/write and random read scores without it. Also, I have no idea if PC Wizard 2010 is any good at hd benchmarking. Finally, a difference between the benchmarks is the one with IRST was after having the computer on a day or two, while I rebooted after uninstalling it, so those were run on a more, uhh, "clean" system.
Installed:


Uninstalled:

 

It also provides TRIM support for those with SSD's.

 

trim is native in Windows 7. I do not think that the IRST provides any benefit to M11x users, since we are all running Windows 7 in native SATA mode.

 

I installed it. Cause it was new and shiny.

Benchmarked the 500GB 7200RPM with HDTune both before and after and noted no difference in performance on my M11xR1.

So, given(as suggested) it uses more resources and gives you nothing in return, give it a miss at this time.

 

Thank god! This forum did not state that anywhere.. lol. +1 rep

 

Not if you installed the Intel drivers (Intel Matrix Storage Drivers) previous to the Intel Rapid Storage Technology. It would actually be disabled if you installed the Intel Matrix Storage driver and ran the trim query "fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify".