Best way to install drives on a Intell port on a P8Z77-V Deluxe

[amerifax]

I have a P8Z77-V Deluxe. It has the following ports.
2 Marvell
2 Intel 6.0
4 3.0 Ports
I seam to be advised to avoid the Marvell Ports except to use for DVD or nonessential drives.

My plan is to install onto the Intel. The Intel would be a Raid-0, maybe
My other thought is to use the Intel to cache my WD 2t Black with another WD 2t Black as a Raid-0
A second choice would be to use a SSD Samsung 850Pro 512 to cache a single WD 2t black, if this is even possible on the Intel 6.0 ports. But if a hard Drive can only get up to 3.0 why would I have to put this on a 6.0 Intel port. True i believe this is the only place to get the caching drive option.

Please help me get a very good understanding on the above.
Bob

 

[ss202sl]

Or just put the OS on the SSD and forget about caching the HDD. If your going to use raid 0, then you also need to figure out a good backup plan so you can easily recover when the raid fails. I used to utilize raid 0 before I had a SSD. Now with a SSD as my boot drive, and my data on a HDD, I don't feel the need to have raid in the picture. It just adds to the complexity of the system and increases the risk of data loss for very little speed increase.

 

[geofelt]

1. Use your ssd on a 6.0 port for the C drive.
It is by far, more effective than using it for any sort of cache to a hard drive.

2. Forget entirely about raid-0.
Raid-0 has been over hyped as a performance enhancer.
Sequential benchmarks do look wonderful, but the real world does not seem to deliver the indicated performance benefits for most
desktop users. The reason is, that sequential benchmarks are coded for maximum overlapped I/O rates.
It depends on reading a stripe of data simultaneously from each raid-0 member, and that is rarely what we do.
The OS does mostly small random reads and writes, so raid-0 is of little use there.
There are some apps that will benefit. They are characterized by reading large files in a sequential overlapped manner.

3. Attach your hard drives on the 3.0 ports. 6.0 speed is only applicable to buffer to sata port transfers. That is a negligible part of the hard drive performance equation. A hard drive is dependent on mechanical performance and only in a minor way to the attachment.
4. I would use the intel ports exclusively if you have enough and disable the marvell adapter.
That will save you on boot times if you don't need to initialize an adapter.
4. Samsung magician software has "rapid mode" which is the capability of using part of your ssd as a cache for hard drives. Research that to see if it applies to you.

 

[amerifax]

>>geofelt<<
Very helpful and detailed to where I can ubderstand. Thanks for the help.

>>ss202sl<<
I will be using Acronis for my BK. I totally agree with the backup strategy. The reason for the raid-0 is I deal with very large files, and massive amounts of files per drive. I use 8 internal and 6 external drives. The 6 are used with Startech's docking stations. I also use the Startech PCI raid adapter for additional expansion. All my drives hold 1 year of data per drive. The more I use the M<ore I see.