Do I really need Intel Rapid Storage Technology?

Title says it all. Do I need the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver in my G73JH? Does it provide any benefits or performance increase? I can't seem to get a definitive answer based on my research. Some people say that it's only for people who've set up RAID on multiple hard drives, others say it provides benefits for single hard driver users as well. I've only got a single hard drive at the moment.

Reason I'm asking is that after recently updating my Intel INF chipset drivers to the latest version, the Intel RST service is suddenly, inexplicably eating up my CPU usage. I won't be doing anything at all and my task manager will show that "iastordatamgrsvc.exe" is using up 25% of my CPU just sitting there. My Intel RST driver is from about 5 months ago, but if this isn't needed, I'll just disable the service so it stops wasting resources.

 

I'm also interested in the responses because I have it on my Vaio F23 (single HDD) and I haven't been able to figure out what it does.

 

Just found this:

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology — Product overview

 

In non-RAID systems, the RST is essentially an alternate SATA AHCI controller. Intel claims that it enhances performance and power management (for the hard disks). It also offers a nice interface for disk information and status.

As such, it isn't essential. I include it in all my installs....installing it right after the chipset. I don't check the "Install Intel Control Center" option, and after my installation is finished, I go back and tweak the RST's GUI. In "Preferences," I disable all notifications, as I don't want the taskbar icon or pop-ups about what it's doing.

I've never had any issues with it or problems with resource usage.

Just to follow up specifically on the resource usage issue....that's the IRST's event manager service. If you disable the notifications as I mentioned above, that service doesn't run.

 

Well, I can't even open up RST's GUI now for some reason. When I try to open it, Windows just reports that "IAStorUI has stopped working." I remember it was fine 2 months ago when I first installed it after reformatting my OS. Don't know what's happened between then and now that's causing it to not work anymore. Anyway, I've put the event manager service on the "manual" startup type and now it's not taking up CPU usage. Everything seems fine now so I'm a happy camper.

 

Reinstall the driver (with the latest version), something's not right.
You can find the download link here.

 

Thanks for the info. I've reinstalled the latest version of Intel RST and everything is working fine now. I can open up the GUI interface and the event manager is not taking up any CPU usage.

By the way, I noticed that the link you showed me was for a G73SW/G53SW clean install, and the chipset and RST drivers are for the Series 6 chipsets, while the G73JH has a Series 5 chipset. Also, you wrote this in there:

Can I still run this .reg file on a G73JH with the Series 5 chipset? How do I execute it after I download it? Does running this do the same thing as unticking "IAStorIcon" in the startup tab of MSConfig?

 

I'm pretty sure it is the same version of IRST for series 4,5,6 chipsets.

 

Yes, just download and run, and yes, it's the same as unticking it in msconfig.

 

OK. Got it. So I'm guessing this .reg file is for people who are too scared to muck around in the registry?

 

It was around 6.5 times easier to make that .reg file than write a guide on how to do it themselves (and not mess anything up).