SSD and Sata 3.0

[randomxt]

I'm new to SSDs and Sata 3.0
I have a GA-X58A-UD3R motherboard

Which SATA port should I use for my SSD and my 2 1TB 7200 rpm drives? I don't want to raid any of them, all are SATA
Is there an optimal port for each?

thanks!!!

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

The fastest and most reliable ports are the Intel ICH10R controlled SATA2 ports so I woould suggest putting your SSD drive on the SATA2_0 and the HDD on  the SATA2_2 and SATA2_3 and then use one of the other controlled ports for the optical drive. This is because the to main data drives are best set to AHCI mode but this sometimes causes trouble for the optical drives so they are better on ports set to IDE mode.

[randomxt]

Thanks so much for your help
But shouldnt I use the Sata 3.0 ports? Aren't they the fastest?

Thanks

[Dark Mantis]

No that was what I was trying to explain to you. In theory they should be but in practice it didn't work out as it should have. Not Gigabyte's fault just the Marvelll chip didn't live up to expectations and was the same on other makes of motherboard too as it was the only option on the market at the time.

[randomxt]

Awesome thanks!
I really appreciate it

[Dark Mantis]

No problem at all. The Marvell controlled SATA3 ports work fine as SATA2 but are just not stable enough to work at full SATA3 speeds.