Anyway to avoid a windows reinstall toggling (in bios) VMD enabled to disabled ?

Hi,
My laptop (Asus Intel i5 11th gen) came with an Intel NVMe SSD and I replaced it with a bigger samsung 980. Doing that, I missed the VMD controller (enabled) in bios so my Samsung is working with Intel RST VMD driver (I had to manualy install vmd drivers during windows install in order to detect the ssd), which is not supported by Samsung Magician software. It's not clear for me if it's better to use the standard microsoft nvme driver with a samsung SSD, but in this case it seems I will have to reinstall the OS. Or maybe there is a trick to avoid that ?
Magician does not support RST drivers but it allowed me to flash a ssd firmware update...and it caused a malfunction for a few hours (write speed of only 4MB/s with consequently system hangs...). It's ok since two weeks and samsung support was not able to explain this strange behavior which disapeared for some reason. As it may be linked to the unsupported VMD driver by Magician, I wonder if it's better to disable VMD in Bios. But I'd like to not reinstall my system ...
Thank you!

You should be able to add Samsung NVME driver to driverstore to avoid a reinstall.

However, tools like Samsung Magician are over rated - after all they only work in Samsung NVMEs. I have a WD NVME and use IRST (also need it for Optane drive anyway), and no issues.

So called claims about extending life are largely nonsense - my Wd drive is about a year old and 1% through its life and I thrash that drive.

The drive will last longer than me LOL.

A good tool for adding drivers is DriverExplorer (RAPR.exe) from github.

Thanks! Good to know about this tool.
But the Samsung 980 does not have a specific driver. From what I read on the forums if I disable VMD in bios windows won't boot (won't be capable to load it's default driver)

To "toggle" (VMD Enable to Disable) you need to remove the existing VMD storage controller devices in device manager first. Only uninstall the VMS controller device, not the device driver. Set Windows to boot into safe mode. Boot into BIOS and toggle VMD either on or off. Boot into safe mode.

Astrakan said:

Thanks! Good to know about this tool.
But the Samsung 980 does not have a specific driver. From what I read on the forums if I disable VMD in bios windows won't boot (won't be capable to load it's default driver)

Click to expand...

That is correct the 980's, unlike the 970's DO NOT require an NVMe driver (there isn't one available). The Windows driver is all that's needed.

I disagree about Samsung Magician being over-rated, but to each his own. And if you don't use Samsung drives, well...

BTW, have you looked to see if the 980 was compatible with the Asus laptop? After all it did come with an "Intel" NVMe drive, which the BIOS was configured for.

As to needing Magician, if you want to update the firmware, it's needed, outside of that, it may not be required. However, if you find the NVMe drive underperforming, it may be required. I have it installed but I'm on a desktop with five Samsung NVMe/SSD drives (2 NVMe, 3 SATA SSDs) installed.

Ditto what catch36 posted!

catch36 said:

To "toggle" (VMD Enable to Disable) you need to remove the existing VMD storage controller devices in device manager first. Only uninstall the VMS controller device, not the device driver. Set Windows to boot into safe mode. Boot into BIOS and toggle VMD either on or off. Boot into safe mode.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I found a tutorial for that. I will try in the next few days (or weeks) and I'll give a feedback here.

Dru2 said:

BTW, have you looked to see if the 980 was compatible with the Asus laptop? After all it did come with an "Intel" NVMe drive, which the BIOS was configured for.

Click to expand...

Nope... There was no reason for me; in my mind nvme interface is the same for any brand. Maybe I'm wrong.

Astrakan said:

Nope... There was no reason for me; in my mind nvme interface is the same for any brand. Maybe I'm wrong.

Click to expand...

You are correct about the interface. I was just curious.

Toggle VMD enabled to disabled done following this tuto: Switch Windows 10 from RAID/IDE to AHCI - Knowledgebase / Microsoft Windows - Critical Technology Solutions - Helpdesk
I ran "bcedit /set safeboot minimal", then reboot and enter bios to set VMD disabled, then reboot. Then, once in windows safe mode I was not able to run windows terminal (write access problem), so I disabled the safeboot mode using msconfig.

No visible change or improvment for now. Magician is happy, no more warning saying that the driver is not supported.
But my reboot time continue to be slow: about 48 seconds (from desktop to desktop). The time boot after a shutdown is ok with less than 10 seconds.
My old Acer laptop with an intel i7 5th gen and a simple ssd reboots faster...
The only app to launch at startup is AVAST and Asus stuff, maybe there are the culprits ?
what are your laptop reboots time ?

Actually, I have a long black screen of about 10 seconds after the spinning point animation (windows boot) until the logon screen appears. I have not this behavior on my old Acer laptop.
I also notice that the response time / latency in task manager is weird for an nvme disk: between 0.3 to 23ms with smalls read/write ...
During the latest windows update it jumped to 120ms !
Is this task manager latency measurement reliable ?

And here are the CrystalDiskMark results. I selected "nvme SSD" in settings
Low iops for random writes ??

Magician benchmark and Task manager screenshot : note the value of average response time during sequential write benchmark