Raid on Laptop? (Intel Matrix Storage... useful?)

[rukiri]

So there have been some problems noted between the Intel Matrix Storage Driver and Vista. A number of new users, myself included, have experienced significant instability with their new thinkpads + vista, and the Intel Matrix Storage driver seems to be a common culprit. Some users have reported uninstalling the driver entirely to be their only solution, others have reported simply updating to the latest drivers seems to help.

In the future these issues will most likely be worked out, but for the present it definitely presents a problem. In deciding whether to simply uninstall the driver I looked up it's function and learned that, as far as I can tell, it serves mainly as a RAID controller as well as providing NCQ support, two features that arguably have very little use on laptops.

So I wanted to pose the question, is there any real use to the Intel Matrix Storage driver?

On a related note, I was also under the impression that the IMS was needed to support turbocache? is this true? Though the turbocache may be of little use now, I think we can all agree that there's great potential in it. Though, perhaps by the time that potential is worked out, stable IMS drivers may also be available..

[GomJabbar]

It is used for the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AHCI

Vista however already has the drivers for AHCI, so I guess you do not need additional Intel drivers. OTOH, it might be the Intel drivers that are included in Vista.