Installation of AMD AHCI driver

I think both AMD controllers are part of the Ryzen CPU. I've also noticed that it is possible to install the Windows 8 AMD AHCI driver on one, but not the other (I suspect the installation is disabled for the controller with the boot drive).

The simplest and safest thing is to awauit further developments on the driver front.

datonyb wrote: i couldnt cut n paste the samsung disk driver and the sata driver info so i have screen shot them for you both are microsoft these are for my evo 850 ssd to be fair i think its blistering fast on my system (also a taichi)

The drivers for any storage disk, the Dev Manager properties on the right, will always be Microsoft, and nothing from an AHCI, RAID, or NVMe driver will be associated with any storage device at the drive level.

The Dev Manager properties on the left are for the SATA controller that is part of the SOC in your Ryzen CPU. The AHCI driver is used by the SATA controller, which is part of the SOC die, or separate chipset (AMD Promontory in Ryzen) in other boards. The AHCI driver listed is storahci.sys, a Microsoft driver, the standard AHCI driver provided with Windows.

The differences between storage controller drivers are not large, and usually one it a little better at one type of benchmark test, and a little worse in another.

I'm using AMD Ryzen RAID, so the driver I have is completely different.

If you ran the AMD All in One driver installation package, then it seems it did not install an AMD AHCI driver, unless Windows update later changed it to the Microsoft AHCI driver.

I went through the AMD All in One driver package, and while I found AHCI drivers for earlier AMD chipsets (SB7xx, SB8xx, SB9xx, Hudson family, Bolton, Kabini, and others), nothing for Ryzen. They are in the Allin1 > Packages > Drivers > SBDrv > hseries > AHCI folder.

The AMD AHCI driver files are generally called "amd_sata". There is another AMD RAID driver, called "AHCI compatible RAID", the drivers files generally named "ahcix64s", but no mention of chipset support, and only for Windows 7.

I don't think an AMD AHCI driver exists for Ryzen, it just uses the standard Windows storahci.sys AHCI driver.

Spectre73 wrote: I am in the same situation. There are 3 different SATA controllers on the x370 Taichi. They are, as far as I understand it, like this: Vendor_ID        Device_ID         Type 1B21                0612                ASMedia SATA Controller 106x 1022                7901                AMD SATA Controller (derived from the x370 chipset) 1022                43B5                AMD SATA Controller (derived from the Ryzen CPU) The ASMedia Controller can be installed with a standard ASMedia driver downloaded from the internet. The x370 chipset controller can be installed by pointing the driver installer from device manager to the AMD 17.10 chipset driver directory. The driver will then install itself as "AMD SATA Controller". I have no idea, if both of these controller work with the mentioned drivers. They install flawlessly, but I have no actual device connected to them. Up until now I was not able to find a driver for the - arguably - most important SATA device, the Ryzen derived one. That device is responsible for the SATA ports 1 and 2 and is the device I connected my 850 EVO to. So if anyone knows of an appropriate driver for the CPU SATA controller (if my assumption is correct) I would be grateful.

Ignoring the ASMedia SATA controller, which is a separate chip, since a Ryzen 7 processor and the SOC in the processor both have SATA controllers, you should see multiple entries in Device Manager for each one, when using AHCI mode. They should be under ATA/ATAPI in Device Manager. I'm not using my Ryzen PC right now, and use RAID mode, but I will check what I have in Device Manager.

If this helps anybody - I ran into a crapload of pain when Windows 10 kept *dropping* the default AHCI driver and replaced it with NOTHING. Freezing the machine and BSOD on restart. I finally discovered what was going on and had to manually force the AMD SATA drivers - after a month of hell .

For the full glory of the detective work:
http://musings.amar.com/2018/01/19/month-of-bsod-thanks-microsoft-and-amd/

My System:
X370 Taichi
Ryzen 7 1800X
16GB g-Skill RAM
Windows 10 PRO 64 bit (Version 1709 - OS Build 16299.248)

MSI RX 580 V1 - Because all that was available

Hard Disk: Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB (Boot)
Data & Backup : 2 x ST40000DX Seagate 4TB

CoolerMaster Master Liquid LS120 with LED straight from Motherboard - Because I can  :-)


Edited by laxamar - 14 Feb 2018 at 10:21am

MisterJ wrote: Thanks, laxamar.  I should of asked if you got your Chip set drivers here: https://support.amd.com/en-us/download I would think this package would contain all needed drivers. Somewhere I ran into a statement that said the AHCI drivers should not be used for the Threadripper processors and I use what comes in the AMD package.  Thanks and enjoy, John.

The drivers are there in the AMD download, but DO NOT install because they are older and are classified for servers. The ahcistore.sys drivers from Microsoft are newer and supposed to be better, so AMD does not develop new ones. The issue I and a few other select "Lucky!" people had was that Windows was de-installing the AHCI drivers. No matter what we did. And that lead to a sh*tload of BSOD and no reboot. Had to reset or restore from backup.  Didn't know why this was happening, but started at the same time they were pushing hidden updates for Meltdown. Then Microsoft  said that AMD gave them wrong tech docs and they were causing the BSOD and no reboot! SO the issue is acknowledged, but if your machine was dead and you had no backups .. you were royally screwed.

So for Threadripper, *do* use the Microsoft Drivers but make sure you have Restore points so if something goes horribly wrong, you can at least recover.  I gave up on my machine and just am using the old AMD drivers, as at least it's stable.