Sata Port Order.... Does it matter

[bbell56]

I am in the process of my first build, total rookie at this....
My motherboard is Asus Z97 Pro, processor is an Intel I7 4790' have 2 optics drives (1 blue ray burner/reader and 1 standard DVD/CD burner reader) I am also installing 3 HD's, 2 new and one from old machine (1 new 500gb WD which will be my OS/software drive and 1 new tb WD drive which will be storage and used 1tb which has "my documents" from old computer) all of which are sata....... My question, does it matter the port order they are plugged in.....???

 

[Samat]

Install the drive that you going to install your OS on to sata port 0 or 1 (if there is no port 0). Also before installing Windows only plug in the cable for the drive you going to install Windows on (you can plug in the optical drives though, don't plug in the harddrives). Only after the Windows install is complete shutdown the computer to plug in the cables to rest of the drives. Maybe plug the optical drives to the last sata ports. The reason you want to have your OS drive in the first sata port is that drives get assigned ID's based on order they are in the ports and if you had the boot drive in other than the first port and you then, for any reason, removed the drive that was plugged to a port number lower than the boot drive would change it's ID and the system would not boot. Also the reason to not have any other harddrives installed during OS install is to ensure that Windows doesn't save any boot information on any other drives besides the boot drive, otherwise you might not be able to boot the system if you removed any of the harddrives from your system.

 

[bbell56]

Mistake....!!!

 

[bbell56]

Thank you very much.... Since the original post, I watched a video about SATA, and learned the difference between SATA 1, 2 and 3, speed..... It said any mechanical would preform just fine on SATA 1, saving SATA 2 and 3 for faster SATA needs (SSD) I have to review my manual and determine port numbers and their speeds 1, 2 and 3 I was considering a SSD as my OS/Software drive, now I may just go ahead and pickup a 250gb SSD for that reason.... The only issue with that, my video editing program stores render files in a folder under "Documents & Settings" and keeps filling the drive to capacity, they are unneeded files, and I was considering moving they folder "Documents & Settings" of my storage drive inside "My Documents"..... Will that cause a problem....? Or will it recreate the folder back on the OS drive after I move it......

 

[Samat]

You can move your My Documents folder to another drive following the instructions on this page (http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-move-windows-7-personal-folders-my-documents-another-drive.htm). It's for Windows 7, but it applies to Windows 8(.1)/10 aswell.

 

[bbell56]

It's the "Documents & Setting" folder I'm asking about, I knew the "My Documents" folder could be moved..... The older "used" 1tb drive is the "My Documents" folder.....

 

[Samat]

It's the "Documents & Setting" folder I'm asking about, I knew the "My Documents" folder could be moved..... The older "used" 1tb drive is the "My Documents" folder.....

Ah, that is a hidden system folder, don't think that it can be moved. Have you checked if you can change the folder where your video editing software saves the data? You can change temp folder(s) from environment variables.

 

[bbell56]

I'm thinking that can be done, I also want my email folder, address bock folder, and google earth favorites folder to be out of "Documents & Settings" and into "My Documents"

 

[Samat]

Check this article on how to create symbolic links (http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/?PageSpeed=noscript). Maybe it is of some help.