ASUS P8Z77-V DELUXE Sata positioning

[giovanni86]

In 3 weeks time i will have this board and I'm having trouble designating which drive should go where. I'm totally new to this because
i usually only install 1 internal drive and really need help on getting this right.

The list:
SSD OCZ Vertex 4 256GB's Sata 6.0GB'S (Will be used as my primary drive)
2x 3TB Seagate HDD's Sata 6.0GB'S (used for storage of old games, videos, etc)
SSD Samsung 830 64GB's Sata 6.0GB'S (I was going to use it as a cache to one of my Seagate HDD's but i can't find anything on that)

The main question is in what configuration on that board should i have these drives in. Theres two grey ones and two blues ones, which seems they run off different controller chipsets and i really don't want put any of those 4 mentioned on the Sata 3.0GB's which the board comes with 4 of those and 4 Sata 6.0 ones. Any help would be awesome. Thanks again.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Giovanni,

All depends on what you plan to do with the Samsung 64GB SSD (if you want to use it at all), and the 3TB HHDs.

The gray SATA ports are Intel PCH 6GB/s controllers #1 on bottom, #2 on top.
The blue SATA ports are Intel PCH 3GB/s controllers #3 on bottom, #4 on top, #5 on bottom, #6 on top.
And the Navy SATA ports are Marvel 6GB/s separate chip controller #7 on bottom, #8 on top.

Note ASUS starts with #1, rather than the conventional #0.

If you want to use the Samsung 830 for cache of one of the 3TB drives, that is done by connecting the 830 on the Marvel #7 and the Seagate on #8. See page 4-16 in the manual (can download). Use the AI Suite Tools>ASUS SSD caching. The Marvel chip automatically detects an SSD and a HDD. Click Cache Now

Connect your Vertex 4 to the Gray #1 6GB/s
Connect the 'frequently used' 3tTB seagate to Gray #2 6GB/s

Connect your DVD to the Blue #3 3GB/s
Connect your storage 3TB Seagate to the Blue #4 3GB/s (actually will never saturate the the SATA3 port)
If you want to use the 'frequently used' 3TB Seagate without SSD Caching, you could attach it to the Marvel Navy #7, or the Intel Gray #5 and should get appx the same transfer rate.

Hope that's helpful.

 

[giovanni86]

Hi Giovanni,

All depends on what you plan to do with the Samsung 64GB SSD (if you want to use it at all), and the 3TB HHDs.

The gray SATA ports are Intel PCH 6GB/s controllers #1 on bottom, #2 on top.
The blue SATA ports are Intel PCH 3GB/s controllers #3 on bottom, #4 on top, #5 on bottom, #6 on top.
And the Navy SATA ports are Marvel 6GB/s separate chip controller #7 on bottom, #8 on top.

Note ASUS starts with #1, rather than the conventional #0.

If you want to use the Samsung 830 for cache of one of the 3TB drives, that is done by connecting the 830 on the Marvel #7 and the Seagate on #8. See page 4-16 in the manual (can download). Use the AI Suite Tools>ASUS SSD caching. The Marvel chip automatically detects an SSD and a HDD. Click Cache Now

Connect your Vertex 4 to the Gray #1 6GB/s
Connect the 'frequently used' 3tTB seagate to Gray #2 6GB/s

Connect your DVD to the Blue #3 3GB/s
Connect your storage 3TB Seagate to the Blue #4 3GB/s (actually will never saturate the the SATA3 port)
If you want to use the 'frequently used' 3TB Seagate without SSD Caching, you could attach it to the Marvel Navy #7, or the Intel Gray #5 and should get appx the same transfer rate.

Hope that's helpful.

You might have just saved me a ton of headaches and frustrations down the road, i mean i looked at the manual over and over again and since i have no prior experience i was a bit stunned but you might have saved me big time, so i salute you Thank you very very much i don't even know how to say thank you besides just saying it on this site. THANK YOU.

 

[giovanni86]

Best answer selected by giovanni86.

 

[John_VanKirk]

You are welcome!

John

 

[maitrikgpanchal]

Hi John,

Your explanation really helped for HDDs configuration. I just want to know what should i do for my HDDs as described below.

1. Corsair Neutron GTX Series 120 (Will be used to install Windows 7 Ultimate)
2. WD 1 TB Cavier Black (Will Contain some of the softwares which I will install after the SSD capacity is exhausted)
3. Seagate Barracuda 2 TB (ST2000DM001) (Data Drive)
4. WD 2 TB Cavier Green (Data Drive)

I am planning to connect 1st and 2nd to gray SATA ports. (Intel PCH 6GB/s controllers #1 on bottom, #2 on top)

And 3rd and 4th drives are also having 6GB/s interface. So what will be your suggestion for connecting them to Navy SATA ports?
I mean, both the HDDs have very important data in it which I don't want to loose. So if i just connect those 2 drives to Navy SATA ports, data in the second drive will not be erased for caching, right? Caching is not enabled by default in the AI Suite.

I just want straight forward configuration for all my 4 drives, no caching and other features. Just want to use all 6 GB/s ports.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi John,

Your explanation really helped for HDDs configuration. I just want to know what should i do for my HDDs as described below.

1. Corsair Neutron GTX Series 120 (Will be used to install Windows 7 Ultimate)
2. WD 1 TB Cavier Black (Will Contain some of the softwares which I will install after the SSD capacity is exhausted)
3. Seagate Barracuda 2 TB (ST2000DM001) (Data Drive)
4. WD 2 TB Cavier Green (Data Drive)

I am planning to connect 1st and 2nd to gray SATA ports. (Intel PCH 6GB/s controllers #1 on bottom, #2 on top)

And 3rd and 4th drives are also having 6GB/s interface. So what will be your suggestion for connecting them to Navy SATA ports?
I mean, both the HDDs have very important data in it which I don't want to loose. So if i just connect those 2 drives to Navy SATA ports, data in the second drive will not be erased for caching, right? Caching is not enabled by default in the AI Suite.

I just want straight forward configuration for all my 4 drives, no caching and other features. Just want to use all 6 GB/s ports.

Hi there,
Two quick questions - what Motherboard are you using, and are all you HDD SATA III (6Gb/s)? and do you have a DVD that is also connected to the MB?

 

[maitrikgpanchal]

Hi John,

I have P8Z77-V DELUXE and Core-i7 3770K.
And I also Asus DVD drive.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi John,

I have P8Z77-V DELUXE and Core-i7 3770K.
And I also Asus DVD drive.

Should have a great setup!

First of all, your Corsair Neutron SSD will have a transfer rate of ~450-500 MB/s, so that needs to go on SATA_1 (GRAY) SATA III port. The 6GB/s rate is 4800Mb/s or 600MB/s. Put your Caviar Black on SATA_2 (Gray) for programs or data.

Put your DVD on SATA_3 (Blue). Leave SATA_4 open for another device if desired later.

Put your WD Caviar Green on the SATA_5 (Blue), and your Seagate Barracuda on SATA_6 (BLUE). These are SATA II ports with a transfer rate of 300MB/s.

All of these ports are from the Intel PCH

The transfer rate of your SATA III HDDs will be ~ 125-150GB/s, well below the SATA II transfer rate of 2400 Mb/s or 300 GB/s, so there's nothing to worry about and absolutely no bottleneck saturation worry.

Don't put anything on the Marvel controller ports (Navy Blue) unless you don't have any Intel ports left. Not worth the hastle and problems from a separate controller requiring a separate driver and problems that occur.

If by chance you did use them, as long as you don't set the BIOS, page 4-16 or the manual, to ASUS SSD Caching, those two ports will work just like any other SATA port, and there' no risk of data loss.

Don't know if you already have your Win-7 OS set up, but if not, when you install the OS on the SSD, don't have any other hard drives connected. Just the SSD and DVD. Wait till the OS is working perfectly, updates completed, before connecting them, and you won't have any trouble.

Have Fun!

 

[FHR]

I have a similar situation: 8PZ77-V Deluxe, with a primary 256 SSD, two 2TB HDD configured with RAID 0, a 1TB HDD and two optical drives. Additionally, I have an old SSD that could be utilized if beneficial.

i just don't know what drive should be connected where. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks,

Fred

 

[Jens Gotfredsen]

I know this may not be relevant anymore..

Though I thought I'd share some common.. guidelines?

Use the highest transfer rate SATA port for your primary SSD/HDD (you will only have one).
Use next best SATA ports for your secondary HDDs/SSDs (you can have multiple! Give the most important secondary drive the next best SATA port first, then continue down your list of priority drives.
CD/FLOPPY (lol - do anyone still use these )/DVD/BLU-RAY goes to the worst SATA port (nothing else!)

Why? You don't want bottlenecking on your Primary SSD/HDD under any circumstance - whether your HDD/SSD can actually use up all the transfer rate on your best SATA port is doubtful, but it's still nice to know that it's not an issue or will be an issue.
Secondly, Secondary drives are used less often - and usually just as a back-up feature. They don't need to be able to transfer at maximum rate.
Thirdly, your CD/DVD/BLU-RAY drives won't be able to get a CD/DVD/BLU-RAY disk up to the speeds in which it can transfer at maximum rate (the disk would break from sheer pressure anyway as it's maximum RPM is about 22k RPM - looks cool tho!)

Use your manual to figure out which SATAs has which transfer rates - THEY WILL SAY. It's no more complicated than this .. Just plug it in and see it all play beautifully together . You could even plug your Primary HDD/SSD into the worst SATA port and it'll work - though it might start creating bottlenecks .