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XPS 13 9360, AHCI for Samsung EVO 960
I use this guide to install a 500 gb samsung evo 960. Everything is fine except my computer is in Raid On mode but things work anyways.
is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ngnIKqPOc4
safe to do in my xps model?
How necessary is it to have samsung nvme drivers/samsung magician running? Everything works fine at the moment but my benchmarks are quite below what it should be. I'd rather not risk the switch if it means i need to reinstall windows and/or lose data.
thanks
jphughan
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March 5th, 2018 11:00
I haven't seen the same problems reported with Intel's driver that I have with Samsung's. That's certainly not to say there haven't been any, but it's also somewhat moot in your case because that driver is required while your system is in RAID mode. If you want to get rid of it, you'd have to switch to AHCI, and THEN you'd have a choice between Microsoft and Samsung. But again, if everything is working for you and you don't feel the need for Samsung Magician's features, I would leave it alone. You won't see any meaningful/consistent performance differences by switching.
jphughan
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March 5th, 2018 09:00
I don't think Samsung Magician offers very much useful functionality on NVMe drives, but if it has something you want, you do need to be on AHCI mode. The Safe Mode workaround has been successful for others, so you can give it a try. If you're worried, you can always capture a system image beforehand using a free tool like Macrium Reflect Free, but in all likelihood, worst case if the Safe Mode trick doesn't work, you just have to switch back to RAID mode.
As for performance, the Samsung NVMe driver does seem to outperform the native Microsoft driver in some cases, but it has also had some fairly nasty bugs at least in previous versions. However, that's not the reason your benchmarks are low. The XPS 13 models prior to the 9370 offer 4 PCIe lanes to the NVMe interface, but they run them in the power-saving GT2 mode (2 GT/s) rather than the max performance GT4 mode (4 GT/s). Having 4 lanes in GT2 mode is essentially the same thing as only offering 2 PCIe lanes to the NVMe interface in regular GT4 mode. Unfortunately there's no way to change that configuration, so you're not going to get past roughly 1.8 GB/s on sequential reads in that system. That also means that the Microsoft NVMe driver is definitely not creating a bottleneck -- I compared both drivers on a 960 Evo installed in an XPS 13 9360 and did not see a meaningfully different result -- so I would stick with the Microsoft driver for simplicity/reliability reasons.
Kapd
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March 5th, 2018 10:00
Thanks, i won't push my luck any further haha
avtella
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March 5th, 2018 11:00
I would avoid the Samsung nVME drivers, some people have been complaining of issues such as lockups and speed issues with newer firmwares (of SSD) which were resolved by using the built in nvstore (nVME) drivers. Also some Inspiron models refuse to detect the 960 Pro in "Raid On" mode as that prevents the port from using the nVME standard apparently, fortunately the XPS series doesn't seem to have that issue. Honestly I use AHCI as I have had weird DPC latency issues with RST previously on various laptops, I have always found the built in msahci/nvstore drivers to be the most reliable. Other than that if it works fine leave it as is as you wont notice any real difference in use when not using RAID.
Kapd
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March 5th, 2018 11:00
Does what you say about microsoft nvme driver apply for intel's driver?
https://gyazo.com/598a1ee329135fb87b2e9df297e109e9