Superspeed USB 3.0 on Series 7 - Win 7

Hi guys,
I wanted to ask you for advice on USB Attached SCSI (UAS or UASP).

I have the following problem that I bought a SSD and want to use it externally via USB 3.0. Benchmarks revealed that the SSD reads/writes at ~200Mb/s, whereas I have seen people managing up to 500Mb/s.

The reason why I am not reaching 500Mb/s is the lack of UASP. This is supported by the Asmedia 1042 USB controller used in the Series 7 (2011) but Windows 7 does not support it. I don't really want to change to Win10 because of lack of support of Samsung.
Basically a Windows 7 UASP driver needs to be added to system. I found out that ASUS' USB 3.0 Boost tool includes this driver but it does not install on non-ASUS system, obviously ( http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/usb-3-uas-turbo,review-32467-5.html). Unless, you modify the system information so that it sees a ASUS system.

It seems to be that this problem must have been experienced by many Win 7 notebook users due to the rise of SSDs. I couldn't find a solution for it yet, but It must be relatively simple to implement this.

Help is much appreciated

Thanks

 

Did you try the Asmedia driver listed here? I thought that the Asmedia controller would be in the attached USB device, not in the host notebook. I presume that you have the policy for the USB storage set to Best Performance.

Did you read the rest of the Tom's Hardware article about USB 3.0 performance?

Finally, for now, while most SSDs have read speeds of around 500MB/s, the write speeds of lower capacity SSDs (256GB or less) is often not more than 250MB/s. Often, the specifications don't make this very obvious.

John

 

Thanks John.
Yes, I have the latest Asmedia driver installed. Also I have seen that others reach up to 500MB/s in an external chase.

Its a pity cause I think that it should be possible to get it running on Windows 7. I have also checked Tom's Hardware article but I am not sure about modifying the BIOS. Could screw up my system.

I keep looking out for solutions.

Cheers

 

I think you are misunderstanding the hardware configuration. This document explains the UASP concept and the comment here is also informative.

I think the USB 3.0 host controller in your notebook will be either Renesas or Intel and the Asmedia controller is in the USB-SSD adapter. I have the Renesas controller in the Samsung NP900X3B and NP900X4C which are a bit newer (2012) than your Series 9. I have just checked how an external USB using the ASM 2105 chip behaves with each.The X3B is running Windows 7 and the X4C is running Windows 10. The hardware ID of the Renesas controller is the same on both machines although Windows describes it differently. The Windows 10 reports a SCSI external drive while Windows 7 says its a USB drive. The speed (MB/s) difference is noticeable: 234 read / 39 write with Windows 7 and 358 / 139 for Windows 10.

I think the last comment here summarises the situation: Microsoft don't want to include UASP support in an older version of Windows.

John

 

Sandy Bridge Series 7 models (such as NP700Z5A) actually have an ASMedia 1042 xHCI controller, not Renesas or Intel.

@crev: As you already know, Win7 doesn't have UASP in its USB host stack, and as John points out, Microsoft does not want to add it to a 6 year old OS.

I think it is great that Asus decided to provide their own driver (or rather, they licensed it from MCCI) but they went out of their way to make sure it doesn't work with other vendors' hardware. And I don't know of other vendors who provide it.

I think you just have to accept you need to upgrade to a newer Windows to make this work on your Series 7 (which has to be 4-5 years old by now). I have a NP700Z3A myself and have no plans to retire it, but I am running Win8.1

 

I stand corrected in that respect.

John