The Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) driver holds the controllers (?) and storage drivers I needed to do a Backup and Restore (Windows 7) of a Win11 Pro saved image, and/or to do a clean installation of Win11 Pro – on an ASUS Prime Z790M-PLUS D4 MoBo.

I am no expert at motherboards, but I sometimes do more ‘Tinkering’ with my main computer (‘Apevia’) than I should—hence the reason for using the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) utility that comes with Windows 11 before actual ‘Tinkering’ starts.

Long story, but I don’t really want to go thru the ‘Nightmare’, in great detail, again. Doubtful that I could remember all the details anyway, since a lot of the experience involved luck, searching, banging away, more searching, more banging away mixed in with deep thought & pondering, experimenting & testing, and a stroke of good luck in the home stretch. 👍😳👌🙂

‘Tinkering’ – then trying to Restore an image or do a Clean Install

I had some issues when first installing the ASUS Prime Z790M-PLUS D4 MoBo in a new build back on 6/24/2023, but everything worked out well. Have done 4-6 Restores of saved images without any issues, but yesterday the restoring process kept telling me there was no target disk.

The Win11 Pro installation was on a Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe® M.2 250GB. It showed in the UEFI BIOS Utility – EZ Mode, but not in the Advanced Mode.

I even tried to just do a clean install of Win11 Pro, but the same no target disk issue.

Time to do some banging around, so took my USB installation of Fedora Linux and booted it up. Using GParted, I reformatted the Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe® M.2 to NTFS format—hoping that would fix the issue.

NOPE! Same issues, but a new issue showed up this time—I think 🤔 it was in another attempt to do a clean install, and it said the partition needed GPT for a UEFI system instead of the MSDOS table. Er, OK, and back to Fedora & GParted again.

Ditto on the NOPE! 👎🤔 Neither Restoring or a clean installation was working, and both methods kept suggesting that I insert a disk with drivers on it. Was using a Create Windows 11 Installation Media USB, so it would have all the drivers needed for Windows 11 on it, but probably not all the drivers for the ASUS MoBo.

The original installation back on 6/24/2023 had worked without me needing drivers—until after it had installed Win11 Pro!?! I dunno…but now it wasn’t restoring or installing for whatever reason.

ASUS support—what Driver is needed?!

Oh, forgot to mention—MoBo was not accepting any new BIOS updates either, and I tried about 5 of the newer ones…Jeez!? However, that was after I had started hammering with Fedora & GParted – so not keeping my BIOS up-to-date may have been the issue. Had updated it to Version 1402 in late September, but they had *FOUR* new ones come out in December—which seems like a lot.

Anyway, maybe I should’ve checked for a BIOS update before starting to hammer away – 😮☹️ – since the ASUS EZ Flash utility worked fine after I got the image Restored again.

OK…now back to the needed Driver – went thru a couple before finding the one/s (?) it was looking for, under the SATA section: Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver software V19.5.7.1058 For Windows 10/11 64-bit. Version 19.5.7.1058 23.65 MB 2023/09/18.

That took time also, and it was different for both the Restoring process & the Clean Install. After the download, and Extraction, it became: DRV_RST_Intel_SZ_TSD_W11_64_V19571058_20230916R

That opened to three folders: 1) Driver, 2) HSA_19.0.1042.0, and 3) Install. Seems like both were in the #1 Driver folder, but I may have also tried #2 HSA folder…just so much searching was going on that I can’t be sure how I finally did each one. So many folders had been opened before it saw the Driver/s it wanted. 😫 🥱😩

Go with the Driver folder first…the process was different in both methods. I did a basic clean installation without internet first, and then restored the original saved image.

Have built many many computers over a couple decades, and never ran into an issue like this.

Conclusion

The ASUS PRIME Z790M-PLUS D4 MoBo can be ‘Temperamental’ at certain times, tho yesterday was only the second time I had issues with it—the first being back on 6/24/2023 during the original installation.

I will keep a closer eye on the BIOS updates in the future, since they came out with four in December—which seems like a lot to me. I normally check for BIOS updates on my motherboards every 6 to 12 months, but did do an update after just three months with this one – from one in late June to another in late September.

Will link this post to the 6/24/2023 ASUS Prime Z790M-PLUS D4 mATX MoBo – BIOS & Drivers post since they both deal with issues I’ve had with it.