hi,
in my workstation (Fujitsu M720, board D3128-A) with a chipset Intel C600/X79 (Intel Xeon E5-1620), the newer RSTe Intel device drivers for Intel AHCI/SATA and SAS controller shut down the hard disks when the operating system reboots (and after it, they are powered on). It doesn't matter if Windows 7 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 is used (or a x86 or X64 Windows operating system).
I tried the following Intel RSTe device drivers:
- 3.2.0.1135 no power off for hard disks, but this driver works only with Windows 7
- 3.5.0.1101 This is the only device driver which works with Windows 7 AND Windows 8 (Windows 10) and does NOT power off hard disks when rebooting the operating system
All other newer Intel RSTe device drivers work with Windows 8 / Windows 10, but they power off all hard disks after a reboot, in fact the following releases:
- 3.5.1.1009
- 3.6.0.1093
- 3.7.0.1093
- 3.8.0.1111
- 4.1.0.0147
- 4.3.0.1219 (this driver from July 2015 is not avaible at Intel's website, but available at Fujitsu's support website)
As the workstation contains three hard disks (and a SSD), a "click" can be heard after a reboot when the hard disks are forced to power off (and then, after a few seconds, they are again started-up, so a reboot delays for about 5 to 10 seconds).
Of course this "click" by the forced power off is barely audible with newer hard disks (all by Seagate) like the ST1000 or ST4000, but can clearly be heard with older hard disks like Seagate's ST31000 (as ST31000528AS).
There is a dual boot installed in my system, so reboots will occur more often than in other PC's. As a permanent shut down of a hard disk after a reboot is not very useful (and could prevent a long life), I still use Intel's RSTe device driver 3.5.0.1101 (from 2012), because this is the only RSTe driver which works with Windows 8.1 (and Windows 10) and does not power down the hard disks after a reboot.
The SAS device driver (which appears in the Windows device manager als "Intel(R) C600 Series Chipset SAS RAID (SATA mode)") is absolutely necessary to access to drives at the SAS controller. Intel's AHCI device driver is not necessary, because the access to the hard disks is already possible with the device driver supported by Windows (but when a newer Intel AHCI device driver is installed for testing, it will also cause a power off of hard disks after a reboot).
A few months ago, the German Fujitsu support said, they had no influence to change this "power off feature" of hard disks by Intel's device driver.
ciao
h-o