Did I mess up by installing Intel Matrix Storage Manager

[DonH]

I'm afraid that I don't know as much as I would like to. In my relative ignorance I may have messed up a system that I built. Hard Drive Sentinel may be confirming this. On the surface, everything has worked as expected for some time, but I've had this nagging feeling that all is not as rosy as it seems. Here is what I know:

HDS 4.20
Win7 64 bit
WDC WD 500GB
WDC WD 300GB
WDC WD 2TB
Non-RAID
ICH10R SATA AHCI controller

All have:
ATA Control Byte = Valid
ATA Checksum Value = Invalid

I realize that this doesn't affect the temp and health data, but there is a wealth of other data that I'd like to have reasonable confidence is valid, so I'd like to find a way to correct this.

It was a while ago that I did a clean install of Win7. I vaguely remember, at some point, installing Intel Matrix Storage Manager because I wasn't able to have Win7 recognize the drives as SATA AHCI. In Device Manager under
Disk drives all 3- MS driver 6.1.7600.16385 dated 6/21/2006
DVD/CD-ROM drives - MS driver 6.1.7601.17514
Floppy disk drive - MS driver 6.1.7601.16385
Floppy drive controllers - MS 6.1.7600.16385
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
ATA Channel 0 - MS 6.1.7601.17514
ATA Channel 1 - MS 6.1.7601.17514
Intel ICH10R SATA AHCI Controller - Intel 8.9.1.1023
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller - MS 6.1.7601.17514
It looks like confusion over which driver to use for the hard drives?
Would it be best to uninstall the Intel Matrix Storage Manager since I'm not doing RAID?

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your message.

I can confirm, everything is perfect, you do not need to worry.

The "ATA Checksum Value = Invalid" means that when the ATA information block detected (which contains the hard disk model ID, serial number, basic features and functions) the last byte (which is a checksum to confirm that the complete block is perfect) is not correct.
It may be altered by the hard disk controller driver - which is responsible to provide the required information when software tries to detect it.

It is not rare that either the "ATA Checksum value" and/or "ATA Control byte" is not valid.

If you prefer, you may try to upgrade the Intel driver as the current "Intel ICH10R SATA AHCI Controller - Intel 8.9.1.1023" is a bit old.
On www.hdsentinel.com -> Support -> Driver Zone you may find newer drivers (9.6, 10.1, 10.5, 11.6) - as they may work differently.

You may use Report -> Send test report to developer option (with the current and/or updated drivers) to confirm the situation and this way it is possible the check the differences.

[DonH]

Thanks. I tried updating to 11.6 and I ended up in an endless reboot loop. I restored the boot drive image and somehow ended up with an Intel 9.1.1.1013 driver for each of 2 SATA controllers. ICH10 Family 2 port serial ata Storage controller 2 - 3A23 and ICH10 Family 4 port serial ata storage controller 1 - 3A20. I now have 3 ATA Channel 0's and 3 ATA Channel 1's all using MS 6.1.7601.17514.

I'm not sure how any of that came about. I restored to an image taken yesterday evening hours before I tried the upgrade.

At any rate, both the checksum and control byte are now checked.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your message and experiences.

The problem is that Intel drivers are not 100% perfect. This is why the Driver Zone offers different versions as each systems may have the "best" version to use and problem may occur with one of the others.
Excuse me for the troubles - in the name of Intel about their drivers....

[DonH]

It's certainly not your fault that I had problems. Perhaps if I had been more patient and started with an update that was closer to the current driver version, I could have avoided the problem. But patience has never been my strong suit.