The Hard Drive Hook Up

[llpatt97]

Hey guys,

I have an Asus P8P67 Pro Rev 3.1 motherboard and was wondering what sata port I should plug my single hard drive into? Also what type of sata cable should I use? Im wondering this because im getting a double post when i start up and think its because of this. Any thoughts or opinions.

Thanks, much is appreciated!

 

[inzone]

A double post? What do you mean by a double post?
You have 4 sata3 ports and 4sata2 ports. The two dark blue ports are thw sata3 with the Marvall controller. The two light gray ports are the Intel sata3 ports and the 4 lighter blue ports are the sata2 ports. If you have a hard drive that is sata3 (6gb/s) then you want it to be pluged into the sata3 ports and you can use either of the sata3 ports. If your hard drive is a sata2 then you can plud it into any of the sata2 ports.
I do not think that your double post has anything to do with which sata port your hard drive is pluged into. You may want to go into your bios and reset it to factory default or upgrade the bios.

 

[llpatt97]

Double post as in motherboard splash screen load marvell controller (no hard disk detected) restart {not shut down though} motherboard splash screen again then loads into windows fine. And i think the sata port would matter due to boot order.

 

[inzone]

No the boot order is selected in the bios and you can choose any hard drive as the first boot device no matter what port it is pluged into. My boot raid setup is pluged into the 6&7 ports and not 1&2.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I'd suggest SATA3_1 which is the 2nd SATA port on the SATA 3 controller. Save the SATA3_0 port for a future SSD.

 

[yoji]

I'd suggest SATA3_1 which is the 2nd SATA port on the SATA 3 controller. Save the SATA3_0 port for a future SSD.

Hope you dont mind a mild hijack 😉 still relevent to OP.

But can you explain please.... I thought all SATA ports were equivilent (in this case SATA3... I appreciate SATA2 would be different) - so plugging into SATA3_1 or SATA3_0 would make no difference. Thought we got rid of the old IDE type restrictions of making sure on different channels etc for best effect.

Have I got that wrong? what are the ground rules please? (I just added a SSD to my sys - want to make sure it optimised )

Thanks in advance.

 

[inzone]

I don't know if the number of the port makes that much of a difference since they all work and when you go into the boot sequence in the bios you can choose any hard drive to be the first boot drive as long as it has the OS on it or dvd drive if it has the Windows disk in it. I guess it's easy enough to put what you want into what port since all you have to do is plug in a cable and if you feel that port 0 is better than port 1 then use port 1.

 

[llpatt97]

my motherboard has a marvell controller which i believe loads first of the controllers and i need to know what sata spot that is all these sata numbers are confusing. If you could tell me what spot it is in looking at the mother board vertically that would help i guess

 

[yoji]

my motherboard has a marvell controller which i believe loads first of the controllers and i need to know what sata spot that is all these sata numbers are confusing. If you could tell me what spot it is in looking at the mother board vertically that would help i guess

HHmm - I have Asus P6T Mobo and that has a Marvel controller - so may be the same/similar.

Spoiler

In BIOS... I have it set as RAID... so it shows no hard drives in BIOS.

When system boots... it goes through BIOS... then RAID... where the Drives flash up... and I get offer "ctrl+I" to configure the raid.

As it happens - I have 2 x 500GB drives in RAID0.. .so they show up in the list as paired...
and I have a new SSD which shows up in the Marvel list... but not in RAID

Now when I go back to the BIOS.... it the boot section I have "Hard drives" option - where I can select which Hard drive boot priority (the RAId pair... or the SSD)

So in BIOS - when I select boot order - I get options SSD/DVD/etc.

The main thing is that all of this is irrelevent to which SATA Port I plug the disks in....

And for you - You dont need RAID - so I guess in BIOS - you dont select RAID.... it should show you your drive... and just boot from it.
If the Marvel controller is chipping in - I guess you need to disable it (BIOs option?)..

Sorry it sounds confusing... but hope it helps.

 

[llpatt97]

Best answer selected by llpatt97.