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I have a motherboard with two SATA controllers. One provides two 6Gbps ports, and the other provides four 3Gbps ports.
I have a SSD that will be the primary system drive, a supplemental 7200RPM 500GB data drive, and a SATA DVD burner.
I know I should put the DVD burner on a 3Gbps port, and I know the primary drive should go on a 6Gbps port, but I'm not sure about the other.
Should I put the data drive on the same controller as the main SSD or should I keep the main channel clear for the OS drive, and put the data drive on the separate 3Gbps channel? Basically, I need to know if the 6Gbps channel is shared, and could there be the potential for bandwidth contention, or if it provides the full bandwidth to every port.
I'm leaning towards putting the data drive on the 3Gbps channel, but who uses a DVD drive very often these days? This would be both drives effectively have a dedicated controller, and I find it unlikely the spinning rust can even saturate the 3Gbps link. However, I'm open to the possibility that I'm wrong here, and I don't want to leave any potential performance on the table if I can help it.
If it matters, this build will run Windows 10.
Joel Coehoorn
Posted 2017-02-16T20:08:37.513
Reputation: 26 787
This has become a moot point... the way the board fits in the case, the 6Gbps ports face out along the far edge from back panel, (closest to the front) and the lower port is blocked by a metal support. Only the top is accessible. I'll leave this open, though, in the hope the question helps someone else. – Joel Coehoorn – 2017-02-16T21:10:13.067
Bummer. Looks like I've been hit by this bug: https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-identifies-chipset-design-error-implementing-solution/ The board is old enough and ran hot enough that the ports seem to be dead :( I'll need to find a way to get at that other port, and eventually there is a separate controller on the board for an eSata port I can adapt to power the DVD drive.
– Joel Coehoorn – 2017-02-16T23:25:13.870Success! The support was only slightly in the way, and I bent it just a smidge to make room. I also reverted to an old IDE DVD burner for now. I hate that I had to put old IDE cables in this build, but otherwise this will be a pretty nice machines: i5 2400, 8GB, Ti 1050, 240GB SSD primary, 500GB 7200rpm secondary. – Joel Coehoorn – 2017-02-16T23:44:24.557