Help: What order of SATA ports to use?

[DrOnline]

Hey guys. Can you help me decide which SATA item goes in what port? Does it matter?! I know we are no longer in the master/slave days. But please.

I have the following motherboard:
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3, Socket-1155

The SATA ports:

Intel® Z68 chipset :
2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), gray
4 x SATA 3Gb/s port(s), blue
Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10
Support Intel® Smart Response Technology on 2nd generation Intel® Core™ processor family
Marvell® PCIe SATA 6Gb/s controller : *3
2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), navy blue

And the following disks:

• 1x OCZ SSD Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 2.5" 120GB SATA 6 Gb/s (SATA3.0), 550MB/500MB/s read/write, SandForce® SF-2281, 85000 IOPS
• 1x 74 GB 10000 RPM Raptor
• 1x 2 TB storage disk
• 1x 1.5 TB storage disk
• 1x DVD-RW SATA

Obviously I want my Windows 7 OS on the SSD. I am not sure if I even need to use the Raptor for anything. What do you think? Any advice much appreciated!

As the kids say: wat do?

 

[fralexandr]

SSD on sata 6gb/s
the rest on 3gb/s

and i don't think the order matters though the mobo's manual should confirm that
the raptor 74gb is pretty old, and i think has slower sequential read/write than your other drives, so i don't really see a point for it unless some programs make random read/writes on non boot drives?

 

[Jman13]

Put your SSD on the Intel 6Gbps port, and the rest on the 3. Don't use the Marvell controller unless you need to, simply because its external to the chip set.

 

[DrOnline]

Thanks, did this, but during the windows 7 install file extraction: "Windows could not update the computer's boot configuration. Installation cannot proceed."

Time to see what google has to say, I guess.

 

[Diogenes2]

Only have the SSD attached until OS install is complete..

 

[DrOnline]

Can you elaborate on that, Diogenes2?

This is an internal disk, surely it should be attached permanently?

 

[fralexandr]

i think he means you should detach all the other hard drives, leaving just the SSD attached until your OS is installed.
then reattach the other hard drives

weird... is your boot order set correctly in the bios?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes, Windows 7's setup utility tends to put boot-sectors on wrong drives, unless you disconnect all of your other HDs before installing Win7.

 

[DrOnline]

Let me take a look. I'm used the the good old Award BIOS, whereas this motherboard has a GUI and mouse support and the works, gonna take a look.

I understand now, I thought he meant for me to disconnect the SSD at some point. I will disconnect the other harddisks and try again.

 

[DrOnline]

Aaaaaw yeah. After I unplugged all disks except for the SSD, everything's installing fine now. Using the driver DVD for the motherboard, doesn't seem like the onboard NIC is enabled automatically.

Then it's windows update and ready to roll, thanks a lot!

 

[Tim Enchanter]

I know this is an old thread, but what happens if the SSD quits working and it is your boot drive?

Can't you have Windows on your HDD too so you would be able to boot from it?

 

[mikeymikec]

I know this is an old thread, but what happens if the SSD quits working and it is your boot drive?

Can't you have Windows on your HDD too so you would be able to boot from it?

I think I know what you're driving at, but if you install Windows on a system that has say two or three SSDs/HDDs connected to begin with, you might end up with a small but essential bit of data one one of the other devices (rather than the drive you specified that Windows should be installed on) that stops the boot process completely if that device isn't present. You don't end up with anything like multiple functional Windows installs on the separate devices, just an irritating situation that makes further storage changes to your system a real PITA until the problem is resolved.

If you're interested in having a more failure-tolerant system then looking into say RAID1 would be your best bet. If two identical storage devices are set up in RAID1 format, then Windows only sees one storage device, and any data changes are simultaneously written to both devices by the RAID hardware/driver. Therefore if one device fails, the system can boot from the other and give you a helpful message that one of your storage devices is toasty yet you're still able to work as if nothing had happened.