Attaching SATA Drives - dual-controller mb

[JHZR2]

Hi,

My new system has a Gigabyte M59SLI-S5 motherboard. It is an Nvidia 590 SLI chipset - regarded as one of the best ones out there right now for performance.

This motherboard is neat, it has a fully passive cooling solution for the chipset - northbridge and southbridge are both cooled by a set of heat pipes. Its a well designed board. It has dual BIOS, so yo cant screw it up too bad, but the confusing thing to me is the presence of dual SATA controllers, with an owner's manual that does not explain the use of both.

THe motherboard, and its SATA controllers can be seen here:
http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/1659_2.html

Specifically, the first 4, on the nvidia 590SLI chipset:

The next 2 also on the 590SLI chipset:

Then there are these two... these are labeled JSATA (which Ive researched to be the name for the 3.0GB/sec spec, but all SATA ports on this board are 'JSATA' 3.0GB/s connections)... these are controlled by the gigabyte SATA controller:

This is the Gigabyte controller:

So... my questions...

I dont reallly understand why they would put a second controller on there for SATA devices, since there are already 6 spots from the nvidia 590SLI chipset.

Do you think they would be there specifically for if you were running a RAID0 setup with 2 drives or something???

Why would you ever want to use those two instead of the six on the other controller?

If I have an SATA DVD drive, do I have to worry that having it on the same controller (but not in the same SATA port/connector location) potentially slow down the hard drives on the same controller?

Also, say I set up my HDD on one of the spots on the nvidia SATA controller, then put in my SATA DVD burner in another. Say down the line I want to change up and run a RAID setup, I suppose Id have to reinstall windows anyway, but would there then be an issue with having peripherals like a DVD drive on the same controller as the bunch of HDs set up in a RAID array on the same controller? Similarly, say I set up drives as a RAID array, then wanted to set up another HDD on the same controller as its own drive as a separate drive all alone and not interactng with the RAID array... would this be doable?

I'm thinking that maybe they set this thing up the way they did so that you can have two drives set up as RAID on the gigabyte controller, and have 6 other spots to put any other bunch of drives on the nvidia controller... or similarly to have up to 6 drives set up as RAID on the nvidia controller, and still have two other spots to attach other drives on the other controller.

Does all my babble make sense? My knowedge is a bit dated... Im up to dae as to what was good to do in 2001, not much more recent... Unfortunately this is the first computer Ive built totally from scratch, and so I dont have any resources to help me much - since of course the owner's manual leaves out tidbits like this...

Any instight would be most appreciated, so that I can hook up the drives and get moving forward! I just want to knwo the best spots to put the HDD and DVD drive, so that I can change up in the future if desired, and actually have a clue what Im doing so that performance is not sacrificed...

Many thanks!!!

JMH

 

[sxg6]

I can't answer your question, but i have the exact same situation on my new gigabyte motherboard.

The orange connectors are Intel, and the purple are gigabyte.

 

[BillionPa]

run em off the orange plugs.

the SATA ports that run off that controller dont get slow like using M/S plugs on a single IDE channel. the bandwidth available to them is VERY high.

you can add a blank drive into a raid array at any time on the same controller, or a blank drive by itself on the same controller. in fact, adding a RAID1 mirror would not require OS reinstallation.

8 SATA ports really isnt that much.... i have 4 and they were all in use day 1. if i had 8, about 7 would be in use.

if you plug the DVD into the orange, and want to use all the orange for RAID setup later, you can plug it into the purple at any time as long as the controller drivers are installed.

 

[JHZR2]

Billion - wow, you're answering all my posts in all the forums...

Thanks for the help and being a wealth of knowledge!!!

Best,

JMH

 

[JHZR2]

I got an email back from gigabyte - sent on saturday, replied today - not bad!

Hi

There are 2 controllers, you can use either one you wish to load up the OS.
Depending on which controller being used make sure that the proper drivers are being used. The GigaSATA controller are the ports on the bottom of the board. You can use either you wish which both prosesses the same speed

Thank you

 

[BillionPa]

they both do process at the same speed, but the nVidia onboard controller bypasses the PCI bus internally so it uses less system resources and is faster.

 

[Syntec-Man]

THAT IS AN AWSOME BOARD!