Intel D975XBX2 help needed

[justarose]

Hi,
I just bought this GREAT motherboard but i am a bit of a newbie with regards to sata drives. I have 5 sata hard drives and 1 ide master with a cdr slave. The ide is my boot drive. I plan on using the sata drives in native sata mode.

My question is two fold:
1. Can i hook up all five drives on this motherboard in native sata mode.
2. If the answer is yes...does it matter which sata connections on the motherboard i use. (blacks, blues or red)??? Why is one of them red...lol coonfused here.

Thankx in advance for any and all input!

 

[f4phantom2500]

i don't think there's any reason why you shouldn't be able to use all 5...but idk for sure idk much about setting up sata stuff. however, i'm pretty sure the reason they're different colors is cuz they are of different sata controllers. could be wrong, but it's a better answer than nothing for now. how are you planning on hooking the drives up, any kind of raid array?

 

[justarose]

Hi phantom,
thankx for the input. I didn't plan on setting up a raid array but will if that's what it takes to be able to hook up all 5. Three of them are WD1600. So i could set up a raid 0 array on two of them but i figured the less i have to configure the easier it will be for me. ))

 

[f4phantom2500]

well, i'm just saying it's a good option you have that i would take advantage of. you could throw the 3 wd1600's into one big raid 0 array, then throw the rest into...idk a jbod array or something. it would take more effort but it'd be cool! you shouldnt have to put them in a raid array in order to boot, does the computer boot with just the ide drive? does it boot with just 1 sata drive? oh...and why bother with the ide drive? with so many sata drives, seriously why? if you had the $ to put down on that mobo, it can't be about saving money...

 

[justarose]

Phantom,
lol no it isn't about the money. When i built my last unit I had the top of the line Asus which was when the sata drives were a new thing. The Asus mobo had 2 connections for native sata and 2 connections for raid array but still had the capability to connect 4 hard drives with pata connections.

I needed more storage space so i bought a wd 1600 pata connect and not paying attention i accidently bought a 400 gig wd sata...and a new motherboard...lol you know how it is when you go into an electronic store. (I have a Fry's pretty close by).

Seeing that i had bought one sata drive and being adventerous i went back and bought two more wd1600 to set up a raid array. Which i did...and it was working perfectly...but something went wrong with windows and i had to reinstall...after that my raid never did work again. grrrrr

So i guess i'm a little gun shy about setting up that way again. Plus i have windows set up on the pata drive and it's working really well...my processor died on me this time after 3.5 years of faithful running for over 12 hours a day.

I plan on eventually switching to all sata drives but for now i just want to get up and running again...i hate my hubby's laptop!!! grrrrr not enuff memory to run my games!!!

 

[nealh]

the red sata is for eSATA..ie external sata...not sure if you can hook up an internal drive

you need to make sure both sata controllers are enabled in the bios...just connect the drives and go

blue= one sata controller and black will be on the other onboard sata controller..I do not have this mobo..so not sure which controller is for colored sata ports

I know red is eSATA...I looked at this mobo prior to my RD600 purchase

 

[justarose]

Neal,
Thank you so much. So in my bios i will set it to raid config which as i understand allows every kind of config and install the drivers for black and blue sata controllers. I figured that the red was for something special but i couldn't find the info in the book that came with the mobo ...or the online users guide at the intel site.

 

[justarose]

Neal,
btw...just so ya know for future reference if'n ya wanna know...))...the blue sata connectors are ports 5, 6, and 7 and have the Marvell sata controller (the drivers are on the blue floppy). The red port is number 4.

the black sata connectors are ports 0, 1, 2, and 3 with port 0 being the first bootable port, and are controlled by the matrix storage tech raid driver. These drivers are on the black floppy.

 

[justarose]

Neal,
I was just reading about your mobo...WOW Which processor are you running. Do you have three graphics cards??? I'm thinking about adding a second one to my system. Does it make alot of difference?