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9520 SSD speed drops and hibernate stops working after switching to AHCI
Hi all. I just got the new XPS 15 9520 (Windows 11) and switched it from RAID to AHCI by following this guide as I'll need to dual-boot Windows and Linux. However, after successfully changing to AHCI, the SSD read speed dropped from nearly 7000 MB/s to 4500MB/s. What's more annoying is that hibernate doesn't work anymore. Upon waking from hibernation, Windows either crashes and gives the Recovery Options blue screen, or it boots up with all the apps closed (essentially a restart). Does anyone know how to solve this?
DELL-Cares
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June 12th, 2022 00:00
Hello, I see you are looking for technical assistance. If you need our help, you can start a private message with us and we will be happy to assist you.
Saltgrass
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June 12th, 2022 05:00
I was looking through your specifications and do not see if your system uses Optane memory. If it does, RAID is required for that operation.
What driver does the Device Manager show for the NVMe drive?
If you are going to put Linux on that system, do research to see the best way to do that and backup everything you can prior to doing so. If done incorrectly, future upgrades may be compromised. I am not a Linux user so I cannot offer guidance.
If that system is a modern standby system, you might want to check the link which talks about that operation. A way to tell if it is, the Properties tab on the Wi-Fi device in Device Manager will not normally have a Power Management tab.
Modern Standby | Microsoft Docs
DELL-Cares
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June 12th, 2022 06:00
Hello, I see you are looking for technical assistance. If you need our help, you can start a private/direct message with us and we will be happy to assist you.
zjjdes
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June 12th, 2022 06:00
Thanks for your reply. I'm not sure if there's optane on the system. In device manager the disk doesn't have optane in the name so I'm guessing there isn't.
The driver for NVMe is Standard NVM Express Controller if the system is switched to AHCI. It indeed has modern standby.
XPS_Man
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June 12th, 2022 21:00
About the speeds, there is a reason that Dell sets SATA mode to RAID for their machines. They perform better with Intel Rapid storage drivers. Even 4500 MBPS is not bad and capable of holding any thing you can throw at it.
I also had issues with Hibernation while in dual boot and it has nothing to do with sata mode. For every model the fix is different, you may have to do some research on Linux forums, in my case solution was to install Ubuntu on secondary HDD. Windows saves a temp image of opened apps and services on the hard drive and restores it when it wakes from Hibernation. If you can not resolve it, use sleep instead.
https://superuser.com/questions/419186/how-should-i-set-up-my-dual-boot-so-that-i-can-hibernate-the-secondary-os
Saltgrass
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June 13th, 2022 05:00
In Win 11, those standard drivers may be fine since my 980 Pro is using standard drivers on a PCIe 4 system and getting full speed.
I have changed controllers on my systems multiple times and never noticed a hibernation situation. Maybe shutting the system all the way down would rewrite your hibernation file and update it.
Philip_Yip
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June 13th, 2022 07:00
The system is likely configured with Intel Virtual Management Devices which requires the RAID SATA Operation. At present there is no Linux Kernel VMD Driver so you need to use AHCI in order to recognise your internal drive in Linux... Sadly the newer Kernel in Ubuntu 22.04 or Fedora 36 does not have an Intel VMD Driver. It'll be another 2 years until a new mainstream build of Ubuntu is out.
The Intel VMD optimizes the performance of the storage controller by communicating with the NVMe SSD, Intel Processor and RAM and is therefore expected to have a higher read/write speed than using the legacy AHCI SATA Operation. In other words is working as expected.
Windows 11 itself is designed to work only on modern hardware with newer technologies... By disabling these technologies i.e. by using a legacy AHCI SATA Operation you are more likely to run into issues such as what you are experiencing such as coming out of hibernation etc.
You'll need to gauge how often you are using Windows and how often you are using Linux. If you use Windows vastly more than Linux, use of the RAID SATA Operation with VMD Drivers and a Virtual Machine (VMware, VirtualBox or Hyper-V) will likely perform better.
inteks
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June 13th, 2022 22:00
intel vmd is only supported on xeon CPUs https://www.intel.de/content/www/de/de/architecture-and-technology/intel-volume-management-device-overview.html
Philip_Yip
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June 14th, 2022 08:00
That link appears to be an older product sheet, with the high end Xeon processors originally showcasing the technology. Intel VMD is now used in more mainstream systems with 11th Generation and 12th Generation Processors:
Intel® VMD is the new way to configure platforms for Intel® RST management of RAID and Intel® Optane™ memory volumes.
The proper HW and BIOS support is currently available in mobile 11th and 12th Generation Intel® Core™ Processor-based systems.
How to Configure RAID or Intel® Optane™ Memory with...
Intel 11th Generation Processors, No Drives Can Be Found During Windows 10 and Windows 11 Installation | Dell UK
Command0r
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August 10th, 2022 09:00
So, guys, I've spent too much personal time resolving this particular issue, and I logged in here just to share my findings. Here's what I found:
And finally, this is the synopsis of the issue (for the DELL support benefit):
That's it, guys. Hope it will help you as it helped me. However, I'm looking forward to the definitive resolution of this issue, simply because you can't keep skipping critical security updates for the OS
Saltgrass
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August 10th, 2022 15:00
It looks like your system is getting Blue Screens. Have you checked for a Memory.dmp or numbered .dmp file in the Windows\minidump file we could check?
If the system has Optane Memory it needs to be in RAID mode and the Premium SATA/PCIe driver will provide good performance.
Since the system is probably a modern standby system, have you made any changes in order to affect that behavior?
If you switch from AHCI to RAID, you need to be going through the process where you set the system, using msconfig.exe to boot back into Safe Mode. Then reboot and go into the Bios to make the controller change and let it reboot into Safe Mode.
You can then use msconfig.exe to change back to a normal boot and the system should not go into a recovery mode.
Saltgrass
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August 13th, 2022 12:00
I am not the expert at looking through Dump files but it appears the driver, WUDFRd.sys, is involved. I found the site below so you might go through that procedure. It is a third party site so be careful what you click on.
Keep in mind, Fast Startup and Hibernation work together.
Driver WudfRd Failed to Load – 5 Ways to Fix It in Windows 10 (partitionwizard.com)
Command0r
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August 13th, 2022 12:00
Thanks, @Saltgrass
I only described my own observation and fight with this issue, and I didn't get that deep into looking in the memory dump files. As I mentioned, this is a brand new laptop, and DELL replaced the first one after my complaints on Hibernation. The support team was unable to resolve the issue over the screen sharing, so they decided in favour of the free replacement. However, as practice shows, the problem is still there. The trick with the memory dump revealed a bit more details. I did the analysis, and this is what I see now:
From what I can see, there's a driver failure that took place. I wonder what driver is this and is there a definitive resolution to this issue?
RobinPGI
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September 23rd, 2022 05:00
Here's my experiences:
Summary: hibernate does not work with AHCI mode, but does work with RAID mode, on Windows 11 with all the latest updates and using Dell Command Update to apply all the latest drivers and firmware.
I bought just over 30 XPS 9520 laptops over the last few months. We changed them all from the default RAID to AHCI because historically AHCI was supposed to be better for SSDs due to the native TRIM support. Intel RST originally didn't support TRIM (still doesn't for RAID1 unless you have the Enterprise version I believe).
When building the laptops (using SCCM, using a pretty much straight off the ISO Windows 11 .wim) we use Dell Command Update to install all the drivers using dcu-cli.exe /driverinstall
We disable Fast Startup via a Group Policy Preference. Fast startup means that when the user tells the laptop to "shut down" it actually just logs them off and then hibernates - so none of the background services actually get shut down and the machine has not started up afresh when they next turn it back on again. I see no need to shave a few seconds off the startup time at the expense of machines getting a regular "proper" restart. Fast startup relies on hibernate, not the other way around.
Anyway, even with the latest v1.6.0 BIOS we still had the issue with hibernate so finally managed to get a method to switch the machine from AHCI to RAID without reinstalling Windows. Now hibernate works fine, so we're going to stick with RAID/Intel RST mode for the storage controller.
We've added the RST driver to our SCCM WinPE .wim, Win11 .wim and the Windows Recovery Environment .wim (inside the Win11 .wim) and are now building all further machines in RAID mode directly.
I did use the instructions on the Gist referenced above but they didn;t work without some extra modifications. Essentially, the info for the XPS 9520 RST dirver is different and our machines didn't have the driver installed. I'm planning to do a blog about it at some point but if anyone is stuck in the interim, ping me a message and I'll see if I can help. Note that I am not going to diagnose why your hibernate isn't working!
Ultimately, Dell need to figure out why there is a problem with hibernate, and this might well involve Microsoft and/or Intel as the AHCI driver is a Microsoft driver that ships with Windows. Either the driver is faulty or Intel's hardware is not properly talking AHCI. We use AHCI mode on our older Latitude laptops and have done since around 2016 and have no issues with hibernate on Win10 1607 (LTSB 2016).