In's and Out's of Hard Drives ???

[scottb613]

All,

I have a Gigabyte GA-EX38-DQ6... I've been considering a few options for improving my hard drive performance...

First off - I've really had a question since I setup the machine about a year ago... As per the documentation - I guess I have two SATAII hard drive controllers on the board... One is the "Intel ICH9R Southbridge" which I assume controls most of the SATAII ports... The other is the "Gigabyte SATA2 Chip" which I believe only controls the (2) purple SATAII ports...

--- Is there any real difference between these two controllers ???

--- Is there any real logic I should apply when connecting devices ??? For example - does it matter that I connect the primary hard drive to one or the other ???

I have been considering buying one of those internal hot swappable drive cages... It states that the motherboard needs to support "Hot Swappable" drives... I believe mine does - as I found a reference for it in the manual... It's under the "AHCI" setting... I would assume I need to enable AHCI for this to work...

--- Can I just turn this on now - after - everything is setup and installed ??? I believe mine are set to the default "IDE" mode...

Last question...

--- Has anyone played with the new Solid State drives and have you seen a dramatic improvement is MSFS performance using them ??? Looks like you can get a 160GB for arounds $350.00 now... Bang vs buck ???

Thanks,
Scott

[loki]

The main difference between the main Intel and the second controller is that the second one may need additional drivers loaded to use. When doing the initial install you would need to load the drivers from a floopy, CD or USB key, depending on what your PC supports.

There may be performance differences as well, though this depends on what model the second controller is and how it is connected. Not sure if any motherboards do this any more, but some used to connect the second SATA controller to the PCI bus, like a built in PCI card essentially. As PCI connections are shared between all PCI devices and have lower bandwidth than SATA supports, drive performance could suffer. I think most additional SATA controllers are connected using PCIe these days, removing this bottleneck.

Check the motherboard manual to see if there is any recommended port to use. Otherwise use one of the Intel ones for your primary OS drive and first DVD drive (if you have more than one). After the OS is installed and the drivers for the second SATA controller added, you can add drives to either one.

To use hot swapping, yes, enable the AHCI before installing the OS. However, do not disable it after the OS is installed.

[scottb613]

Hi Loki,

Thanks for the response...

I played around with my drives today... I moved all the drives onto the "Intel ICH9R Southbridge" controller - as this one has the most ports... Also - very little was mentioned about the controller in the manual...

I have two options for the IDE mode - "Native" and "Legacy"... Right now it's set for "Legacy"...

QUESTION: Would I gain any benefit in performance by taking the time to convert this to AHCI ???

Now - the two ports on my "Gigabyte SATA2 Chip" - I changed to AHCI... Currently - I have no devices installed... I plan on getting one of those Icy Dock - hot swappable - disk enclosures for these ports... I should then be able to swap out drives as needed...

Thanks,
Scott