Key Features of Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) SATA RAID for Windows*
Content Type: Product Information & Documentation | Article ID: 000101190 | Last Reviewed: 05/19/2025
The Intel® VROC family of products is comprised of several components that provide a complete platform solution. The following is a list of the key features that are supported on the Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) sub-product. To learn about the key features supported by other Intel® VROC sub-products, refer to the following resources:
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1 Supported on both Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) and Intel® VROC (VMD NVMe* RAID).
Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) is designed to support both M.2, SATADOM, and standard form factor SATA drives.
Learn about the Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) key features in the following resources:
Learn about the Pre-OS features and functionality of Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) SATA RAID Pre-OS RAID Management Environment.
The Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) package supports enclosure management, compliant to SFF-8485 standard (specification for the Serial GPIO Bus) as well as SFF-8489 (specification for the Serial GPIO IBPI (International Blinking Pattern Interpretation)), to identify drive location or unit failures on the SATA, sSATA, and tSATA controllers.
The Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) package supports the Common Storage Management Interface (CSMI) for reporting RAID configurations and SMP, SSP, STP Pass-Thru. This interface can also be used to update drive firmware on pass-thru drives attached to the SATA, sSATA, and tSATA controllers in RAID mode.
The following commands are supported by Intel® VROC (SATA RAID): CSMI_GET_CNTRL_CFG, CSMI_GET_CNTRL_STATUS, CSMI_GET_DRIVER_INFO, CSMI_GET_PHY_INFO, CSMI_GET_RAID_CONFIG, CSMI_GET_RAID_INFO, CSMI_SATA_SIGNATURE, CSMI_SSP_PASSTHRU, CSMI_STP_PASSTHRU, SSP_PASSTHRU, ATA_DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE.
The Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) package supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) on the SATA, sSATA, and tSATA controllers. NCQ is the ability of the SATA drive to re-order commands in order to maximize the efficiency of gathering data from the platters.
The Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) package supports several combinations of SATA drives, arrays and RAID volumes. Learn about the maximum hardware configurations allowed in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) SATA RAID Maximum Hardware Configurations Supported.
The Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) package supports the following Extended SCSI Pass-Thru commands as per the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Specification v2.3.1, Errata D:
Intel® VROC 7.6 introduces support for the EFI_ATA_PASS_THRU protocol in the Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) UEFI driver. Learn more about this support in New Features Introduced with the Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) 7.6 Release for Windows*.
The Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) package supports the ability to enable/disable RAID Volume Read Cache through the Intel® VROC Graphical User Interface (GUI) application. This feature is enabled by default.
The Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) package provides support for staggered spin-up on the SATA, sSATA, and tSATA controllers for those drives that support this feature.
If the Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) driver is downgraded to a previous version, Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) volumes will not be permanently broken. When the Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) driver is upgraded to the latest release, any of the Intel® VROC (SATA RAID) volumes will remain fully operational. Any exceptions to this will be clearly outlined in the Intel® VROC release notes.
Consult the Intel® VROC release notes in Intel® Virtual RAID on CPU (Intel® VROC) Release Notes for Windows*.