Link Power Management == days long updates

This mistake cost me over a day of update hours...

Just recently got a scratch and dent 15 R3 from the Dell outlet. Great machine, but only had a spinning drive, so I added cheap WD m.2 sata for the boot device. I did a fresh install of windows with the new drive and immediately downloaded all of the BIOS, drivers, and applications from Dell. One of them was the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver. I guess by default it set the "Link Power Management" to "Enabled". I really had no idea what this driver did or how to manage it. I was just trying to install every driver the machine was supposed to come with.

I then immediately did a windows update... it took over 6 hours to finish. I thought I had a bad SSD. I had never used western digital SSDs before. I thought maybe they were just bad. I downloaded all kinds of bench marks, and ran them. They seemed a little slow, but not to far off spec. But everything was just sluggish. Boot times were ok. So I figured, maybe I had a driver incompatibility or something. I then ran another windows update... this was the "creator" update to windows 10, and it took 12 hours.

After that, I ran more benchmarks, googled for m.2 sata incompatibilities, etc. Finally, I somewhat randomely clicked on the Intel management app in the tool tray, and happened upon the "Link Power Management" option. As soon as I disabled it and rebooted, the system immediately became snappier. The very next installation program I ran screamed. Oh my god! I can't believe how much time I wasted on this.

Maybe all of you already know this, but I am an Alienware newbie. Anyway, just thought my story might save someone a bunch of time.

 

intel rapid storage is discontinued. do you have to enable AHCI sata operation on BIOS or RAID

 

I hadn't changed it, but it was set to AHCI.... again, it was an outlet machine. Not sure why anyone changed it. If I set it back to RAID, I will have to reinstall everything again. Not sure I want to start all over again. What would be the advantage of having it set to RAID?

 

Really? I thought Intel Active Matrix storage was renamed to IRST.If its EOL, I'm uninstalling that driver package to save some 100MB.
I still see driver updates for IRST.
@mc2wheels Is it M.2 SATA or PCIe?

 

I got sata because it was cheap.... again, I bought at the outlet.

Anyway, I bit the bullet and installed with RAID ON in the bios instead. I notice no difference in the benchmarks, and I still had the same application installed by the dell driver down loader. This time I chose to turn off Link Power Management before doing any windows updates, and I had no issues this time.

 

Link power mgmt allows your laptop to transition to lower cpu states and promise better battery life. I used this bat file and enabled HiDPM(Host Initiated HDD power down) and DiPM(Device Initiated power down). I chose DiPM on AC source and on battery chose the default HiDPM and DiPM.

 

Much appreciated. I will give it a try. I am all about trying to save power.... just not during windows updates while trying to set up a new system.