My ASUS X299 Mark 2 was originally installed with Windows 10 (installing ASUS drivers), then upgraded to Windows 11. Though it generally worked, I was experiencing various driver issues, so I choose to refresh Windows 11 as a clean installation ("Rest this PC", "Remove everything", "Cloud download", so as to not pollute any of it with drivers on that current system), and avoiding ASUS drivers and software where I could. It worked well -- everything came up fine, I was never prompted for drivers, and Device Manager has no errors. My LAN, sound -- all are working. All without installing any of the ASUS stuff.
So, up to this point, I've not used *anything* from the original ASUS Installation CD nor from the ASUS site. I had expected I'd need to, and I was prepared to, but it's working, so I am reluctant to.
My real confusion relates to the RAID support. My system has two RAID-1 arrays ("Boot" is a pair of 512GB m.2 SSDs, and "Data" is a pair of 8TB hard drives) -- these are defined in the UEFI BIOS under the "Advanced" menu. My concern is three-fold:
- I've read that the Intel device drivers (which I assume is what Windows installed) shouldn't be used when manufacturers have their own versions. And it is beyond confusing and daunting to try to figure out what ASUS drivers/software applies -- they have various versions with inconsistent naming, and seem to be three different types of RAID (UEFI, VROC and another?), and none listed under Windows 11, and yet ASUS has "Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST)" v19.1.0.1001 separately (not linked from the ASUS X299 Mark 2 stuff, and not identifying what systems it applies to) here:
https://www.asus.com/supportonly/irst/helpdesk_download/ - Before I did this refresh, whenever I'd boot my system, I'd get a message a minute or so after Windows came up -- it was to the effect "One or more drives are protected from failure" or, if there'd been an unexpected power-off, "Data consistency check is being performed". Again, these aren't the exact messages, but that is what they were conveying.
- Do I need to install the ME driver and ME Update tool from ASUS?
So, with my UEFI RAID configuration on a clean Windows 11 installation, what, if any software and drivers SHOULD I be installing now?
Many, many, thanks from a confused guy ...
