Information on whether hard drives of 3TB, 4TB, 5TB, 6TB, 8TB or more will work on ICH9R (Intel P35, Intel X38) or ICH10R (Intel P45, Intel X48, Intel P55, Intel x58) controllers.
As non-raid member on RAID or AHCI mode
If you are wondering if large hard drives of 3TB, 4TB, 5TB, 6TB, 8TB or more will work as non-raid member on a RAID or AHCI SATA mode for storage controllers like ICH9R(Intel P35, Intel X38) or ICH10R(Intel P45, Intel X48, Intel P55, Intel x58) then the answer is yes.
Especially for the storage controller in RAID mode and on Windows 7, you will need at least version 10.5 of Intel Rapid Storage Technologies (IRST) drivers. Starting with IRST v11, Intel began to remove support for these older ICH chipsets. If you wish to install newer drivers, you can try with the modded IRST drivers from here. The latest version that should work for ICH9R and ICH10R is "Intel RST(e) drivers v14.8.18.1066".
On the system that I have tested Intel Matrix Storage OROM version was 8.7. I am not aware of any restrictions as far as how old the version of OROM could be, my guess would be that anything above 8.0 would be fine.
About using them in a RAID array configuration
If you wish to use two or more 3TB+ drivers in a RAID array, you need to have Intel Matrix/Rapid Storage OROM updated to version 10.5 or newer. Updating the OROM to 10.5 on a board powered by any of the following Intel chipsets P35, X38, P45 or X48 could prove for many motherboards to be impossible because of the limitations in maximum supported BIOS size. Anyway, if you wish to venture into this here is a topic with lots of information from people slipping newer versions of OROM onto their bios updates. Here you can read a guide on how to update the OROM in your bios.
Additional info
3TB+ will be seen as 670GB-800GB drive in BIOS and Intel Matrix Storage OROM initialization, but it will be seen at full size and will work at full capacity if you have the OS and the storage drivers that support large drives.
When you initialize the disk in Windows Disk Management, you will need to select GTP instead of MBR as partition style so that you can have access to drive’s full capacity.
Are they bootable?
These large drives won’t be bootable by themselves on older non-UEFI motherboards, so will need to have the boot manager on a lower capacity drive or on USB Flash memory stick if you plan on installing the OS on a 3TB+ HDD with an older non-UEFI motherboard.
OS compatibility and restrictions
| OS | As data disk | As boot disk |
| Windows XP x86 | No (Yes with trick) | No |
| Windows Server 2003 x86 SP1+ | Yes | No |
| Windows XP and Server 2003 x64 | Yes | No |
| Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10 x86 | Yes | No |
| Windows Vista, 7, 8, 10 x64 | Yes | Yes on UEFI-based systems |
| Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2016 x86 | Yes | No |
| Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2016 x64 | Yes | Yes on UEFI-based systems |
| Linux (Ubuntu 8.04+ x86, x64) | Yes | Yes |
Hey and big thanks for the article!
I try to install newer Intel RST through "setup.exe" on my P35/ICH9R with fresh Windows 10 32-bit but the installation program fails with "platform not supported".
The Intel website says the download supports both 64- and 32-bit Windows 10 but there is also a long listing of supported NUC systems etc.
Should I instead extract the drivers and add manually through Device Manager? Which drivers on what device in that case?
Thanks
Mike
Intel removed support for ICH9R from their IRST v11 and later drivers. You can try modded IRST from here. The latest version that should work for ICH9R is "Intel RST(e) drivers v14.8.18.1066".
It would have been nice if you would have disabled the adblock.
For completeness I tested all the matching downloads currently available at https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/55005/Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Intel-RST- and the result was:
14.8.16.1063 SetupRST.exe: This platform is not supported.
13.6.0.1002 SetupRST.exe: The following application requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5: Intel Rapid Storage Technology
12.9.0.1001 SetupRST.exe: This platform is not supported.
11.7.0.1013 iata_enu.exe: This computer does not meet the minimum requirements for installing the software.
I will look into the modded drivers, big thanks again and sorry about the block - now whitelisted!