Trouble and Confusion with Intel’s X99 Chipset and SATA Ports

There has been a lot of confusion the past couple of weeks where it first was thought that Intel had pulled back the latest RSTe drivers, but in fact the were just listed wrong as they’re not working or intended to work with the X99 chipsets. There was also the false claim that the normal RST drivers wouldn’t support TRIM in RAID0 mode for SSDs, but Intel has rectified that statement and it should be fully working.

What however doesn’t work, or not as it should, are any SATA port beyond the first six. The X99 chipset supports up to ten SATA3 ports on paper and they also all work. But not for the Intel RST driver and in return this means that you can not setup a RAID over all ten ports. The last four will report as connected to a separate controller using the windows AHCI drivers instead of Intel’s RST.

There was already a similar problem with the previous X79 chipset and the integrated storage controller that lead to manufacturers completely redesigning their boards and reduce the SATA ports. Now it looks like history is repeating itself again and we might expect the same results.

Thanks to Heise for providing us with this information

Image courtesy of Heise