Preserve Existing Windows OS Install with Intel VMD RAID Creation

Preserve Existing Windows OS Install with Intel VMD RAID Creation.md

Preserve Existing Windows OS Install with Intel VMD RAID Creation

[Recreated from my comment]

tl;dr DISM injection of iaStor driver into an environment that will boot your existing Windows install into Safe Mode where you can run SetupRST.exe. I used my existing Windows Recovery Environment.

I did also create a bootable USB drive that allows access should something fail with the recovery environment, but I don't think it is totally necessary to get it running at first.

My Scenario

• 13th Gen i9 13900HX
• RST VMD Controller A77F
• Driver version 20.2.26.1025
  • Archived installer .exe
  • Archived extracted iaStor driver
  • At the time of writing, this driver supported 12th - 15th gen. platforms.

Credits and Other References

• Intel documentation
  • Archived PDF H-Series
  • Archived PDF M-Series
• @TomCan's/this gist
  • @johnthepro's comment
• ...and, as I'm writing up all of this, I find XinGuo's response on "MSLearn".

Obtaining the "iastor" Driver

The exact name of the driver seems to vary based on the Intel platform and the version of the driver supporting the platform. In the case of 13th gen. and driver v20.2.26.1025, the name of the driver is iaStorVD.inf. On an earlier 10th generation i7-10875H, the driver installed was

 21ms 2026-01-08 15:48:48 PS7> dism /online /get-drivers /format:table | select-string iastor

oem102.inf     | iastorhsa_ext.inf                               | No    | Extension             | Intel Corporation             | 2022-09-19 | 18.7.6.1010
oem107.inf     | iastorac.inf                                    | No    | SCSIAdapter           | Intel Corporation             | 2022-09-19 | 18.37.6.1010
oem108.inf     | iastorpinningcomponent.inf                      | No    | SoftwareComponent     | Intel Corporation             | 2022-09-19 | 18.7.6.1010
oem109.inf     | iastorhsacomponent.inf                          | No    | SoftwareComponent     | Intel Corporation             | 2022-09-19 | 18.7.6.1010

Pre-Extracted Drivers

blastille's repo has extracted drivers.

Extracting Drivers

If blastille's repo does not have the drivers you need, and you're able to get the correct installer from elsewhere, then the drivers are extracted from the RST installer using the following command

.\SetupRST.exe -extractdrivers SetupRST_extracted

The Process

1. [OPTION a)] Could also do this later in the process with dism in [OPTION b)].
   1. Provision the iaStor drivers in your existing Windows install driver store using pnputil or however is convenient for you to install the .inf from the extracted iaStor driver.
   2. The injected drivers must include both the VMD driver and the HSA (hardware support application) driver(s). v20.2.26.1025 had 3 separate drivers, pnputil /recurse will all 3 in a single /Add-Driver command.
      1. iaStore
      2. HSA extension
      3. HSA component
2. Use diskpart to assign a drive letter making the recovery partition available.
3. Use dism to inject all of the drivers into the recovery environment.
   1. The directory structure of the recovery volume is hidden so cmd and dir /a are your friend.
   2. dism /Mount-Image requires a destination directory on a fixed/non-removable drive volume via /MountDir
      1. mkdir c:\mnt and remove it later.
   3. dism /Mount-Image...
   4. dism /Image:<mount dir> /Add-Driver /Driver:<driver dir> /recurse
   5. dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir<mount dir> /Commit
4. Enable VMD in UEFI settings.
5. Attempt to boot as normal.
   1. Should get the usual inaccessible boot device error.
6. Reboot or power-off, power-on.
7. Recovery is entered automatically.
   1. Drives should be available now in the recovery environment since the iaStor driver was added above.
8. [OPTION b)] if you didn't use [OPTION a)].
   1. Use dism to inject the drivers into the now available existing Windows install which should now be visible as its usual sysdrive: (default, c:).
   2. dism command similar to above but using /image:<drive letter of existing Windows install>: /Add-Driver instead of mount, add driver, unmount.
9. Stay in the recovery environment after exiting the recovery shell by typing "exit".
10. Select "Startup Settings" from the recovery environment.
11. Boot your existing install to Safe Mode.
12. Run the full SetupRST.exe installer.
13. Reboot letting Windows boot as normal and login.
14. Let Windows store install the HSA (Hardware Support Application).
15. Run the Intel VMD/RST/Optane hardware support application.
16. Create hardware RAID volume.
    1. Running from the existing Windows install gives the option to preserve the contents of the installation during the creation process. This work for me for either RAID0 or RAID1. ...
17. Profit

Variations on the theme - "You're Already Stuck so you..."

...could either,

1. Create a (USB) bootable environment that has access to the drivers and perform the injections from there.
   1. Possibly even boot your install into Safe mode from there?
2. Disable VMD/RST in UEFI settings and then follow the above process.
3. Make sacrifices to the boot Gods and hope they are appeased enough to grant you access to your drives during the boot process.

..oh yeah, YMMV ;-)