SATA ports & which to use?

[LGA1366]

I have a Gigabyte ga-ex58-ud3r mb that has 8 total sata ports: 6 are controlled by ICH10R & 2 are controlled by "Gigabyte GSATA2 Controller". I have four hard drives & two optical drives & have been using the six bridge controlled ports. Now I have to replace one of my PATA optical drives & am adding a new SATA drive -- needing to use 7 total. What are the differences between SATA ports? Should I keep hard drives (especially boot drive) on bridge ports or is it better for hard drives to work through the Gigabyte controller? If I use one GSATA port, should I use both? Thanks.

P.S.  I'm not running a RAID configuration.

[nijel]

Keep HDDs on ICH10R for better performance, doesn't matter for the opticals. You don't need to use both GSATA ports.

[LGA1366]

Nijel -- Thanks, been looking around & got other similar advice.  The GSATA ports sound like they are mostly designed as a RAID configuration tool or, is it that the ICH10R can only support the six primary ports?

[nijel]

ICH10R has 6 ports only, the ones you call primary. GSATA is a completely different controller, I think Marvell on your board( ?) with two additional ports.
Both can do RAID, but ICH10R is considered much better in any case.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

There are three different controllers on yuour board. The Intel ICH10R (southbridge), the Marvell 9128 (SATA3) and the J Micron (GSATA).
Forget the Marvell as SATA3 but it is quite capable as SATA2 ports. The GSATA are fine for anything including optical drives. The fastest and most reliable ports on your board are controlled by the Intel chip and should be used for your boot drive and other important drives.