It is February 2016. I am trying to find Windows drivers for an ‘antique’ Intel RIAD controller, the ESB2 SATA RAID card.

This card is accessable through the system BIOS and Windows 2012 R2 installs OK, but I can’t see the status of my RAID drives when in Windows. Is my array OK?

I started a search and tried to install drivers from Intel. Their Intel RST page says it has drivers that support Windows 2012 R2 but when trying to install I am told the platform is not supported.

I came to learn the last version of Intel drivers to support the ESB2 SATA RAID card is version 10.1.5.1001.

After doing some Google searching I found an installer for version 10.1.5.1001. Bingo, they install and it works. If you want to grab the Intel drivers yourself, we are keeping a copy here. Intel_Rapid_Storage_10.1.5.1001

Prior to the install the driver the card was using was Intel 8.6.2.1315 with a date of June 8, 2010. Now Windows is reporting version 10.1.5.1001 with a date of February 18, 2011.

Now with the Intel Rapid Storage Technology software available on the OS, I can enable/disable the write-back disk cache on my storage array. Dangerous? Yes. Faster? Yes. Will I do it? Probably.