Does it matter which SATA port I use on the motherboard?

[marcus24]

This might be a silly question, but can I use any SATA port for my hard disks on the motherboard?
The motherboard I'm using is a Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P.

 

[WilliamM2]

On your board all the ports are the same, so it doesn't matter, other than drive order.

On some boards there are SATA 3Gb/s ports and SATA 6Gb/s ports. You would want any SSD's on the 6Gb/s ports.

 

[jkauff]

Your motherboard may use two SATA controllers, the one that is part of the chipset, and a secondary controller from a company like ASMedia. Conventional wisdom is that it's best to attach an SSD to a chipset controller SATA 3 port. For your other drives, it shouldn't matter.

EDIT: I looked up your motherboard, and all the ports are on the chipset, so use any port.

 

[manesridykhan]

Hi,
The appropriate way of connecting in your drives is to coordinate what your start purchase is. For example, if your CD/DVD generate is the first bootup system, then connect that into your SATA Slot #0, The second aspect should be the second bootup system and so on.

 

[bonehead123]

Hi,
The appropriate way of connecting in your drives is to coordinate what your start purchase is. For example, if your CD/DVD generate is the first bootup system, then connect that into your SATA Slot #0, The second aspect should be the second bootup system and so on.

hummmm....just curious but what exactly is a "start purchase" and a CD/DVD "generate" ?

Also, most machines will boot from the first functional OS it can find, regardless of which drive it is on or what connector that drive is connected to......

So yes, if you have more than one disk with more than one OS, then by all means connect your primary OS disk to "slot 0" or connector #1, and the rest on down the line.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Generally, I put my boot drive on port #0, and my optical drive on a higher (or highest) port #.

Be aware that some chipsets, like the ICH7, have four SATA and one IDE, and you have a choice of either 4 SATA + 0 IDE or 2 SATA + 1 IDE.