[SOLVED] How to Best Utilize the Different Type SATA Ports on MB?

[ganymede-]

It has been five years since I built my current computer. Aside from upgrading my main drive a number of times for bigger and faster SSDs, I have done nothing else to my computer. Last week, I started having a problem with one of my hard drives. For whatever reason, this particular HDD would not consistently appear under ‘My Computer’ or under ‘Disk Management’ found via ‘Administrative Tools.’ While troubleshooting, it became apparent that I needed to replace the HDD, so I purchased a WD 4TB HDD and installed it today.

Initially, I had planned to connect the new HDD into the exact SATA port the previous hard drive had held on my motherboard; however, upon looking at my MB manual, I saw that three different types of SATA port were available, and suddenly I was not confident that my current SATA drive configuration was optimal.

I would really appreciate feedback on which SATA port would be best for my main drive which is a Samsung EVO 500GB SSD, and which SATA port made the most sense for a 4TB hard drive that would be accessed continually by me, and be used as a Scratch Disk for programs like Photoshop. I have five drives in total, three (3) SSD and two (2) HDD.

In the motherboard manual (ASUS P8 Z77-V PRO), it shows:

• two (2) SATA ports as ‘Intel Z77 Serial ATA 6.0 Gb/s connectors’ [gray color]
• four (4) SATA ports as ‘Intel Z77 Serial ATA 3.0 Gb/s connectors’ [blue color]
• two (2) SATA ports as ‘Asmedia Serial ATA 6.0 Gb/s connectors’ [dark blue]

I have no idea whether the color of a SATA port means anything beyond what ASUS used. If the colors assigned to these SATA ports mean something, please enlighten me.

As I see it, the two (2) best SATA connection ports for either a SSD or HDD is the ‘Intel Z77 Serial ATA 6.0 Gb/s connectors’ [gray color]. These SATA connections have the ‘Intel’ name and the 6.0 Gb/s speed. I am not sure what to make of the two (2) SATA ports that are labeled with ‘Asmedia’ and have the 6.0 Gb/s speed too. Are the ‘Asmedia’ SATA ports processed differently by the motherboard than the ‘Intel’ ones?

Is it advisable to use the four (4) Intel SATA connectors that are at the slower speed of 3.0 Gb/s than to use the ‘Asmedia’ SATA connectors running at 6.0 Gb/s?

Thanks for taking the time to read my post and feedback would be great.

 

[USAFRet]

1. two (2) SATA ports as ‘Intel Z77 Serial ATA 6.0 Gb/s connectors’ [gray color]
2. four (4) SATA ports as ‘Intel Z77 Serial ATA 3.0 Gb/s connectors’ [blue color]
3. two (2) SATA ports as ‘Asmedia Serial ATA 6.0 Gb/s connectors’ [dark blue]

In order of use/performance, descending:
1, 3, 2

The Asmedia ports are slightly slower than the 6GBs Intel ports, but faster than the 3GBs Intel ports.