does it matter to which SATA connectors I connect my hard-discs?

[Santuzzo]

Hi,

the title basically already states my question: does it make any difference which hard-disc I connect to which SATA connector of my motherboard? My motherboard has 6 SATA connectors, Do they have a certain order?

Lars

 

[MindoverMaster]

Your OS drive has to be in SATA0. Look in your motherboard manual. It will tell you which is which. Beyond that, it does not matter.

 

[Santuzzo]

Your OS drive has to be in SATA0. Look in your motherboard manual. It will tell you which is which. Beyond that, it does not matter.

Thanks!

My motherboards SATA connectors are labeled form SATA1 through SATA6, there is no SATA0.
Am I missing something?

I don't know if this is important, but in the BIOS I have 'Configure SATA' set tp 'RAID' (that's becasue I have one big data disc in mirrored RAID set-up).

Lars

 

[MindoverMaster]

Some say SATA0 others are SATA1. Depends on board, but yes, OS on first one available. If you have RAID, leave it.

 

[Santuzzo]

Some say SATA0 others are SATA1. Depends on board, but yes, OS on first one available. If you have RAID, leave it.

Thanks !

Well, I have always had it connected this way, and I don't think OS is connected to SATA1.
Would it only make a difference if I was not using RAID?
If I change it around now, will that mess things up?

 

[MindoverMaster]

That's how I know it to be. I'm not very keen on RAID, except how it works.

 

[Santuzzo]

That's how I know it to be. I'm not very keen on RAID, except how it works.

OK ! Thanks. Well , I guess, since everything is working, I better leave it the way things are. I suppose, if it was not connected right, I would probably notice, no?

 

[patonb]

I've never cared where my drive was put in.... I had my os drive after my storage for yrs, and its never been an issue.

Moving them can cause issues as the bios doesn't know where the os went.

 

[MrMarcDee]

Your OS drive has to be in SATA0. Look in your motherboard manual. It will tell you which is which. Beyond that, it does not matter.

Not necessarily. Well, maybe it does if you are using Windows but I should think not.

When the computer boots up it'll assign labels to the hard drives based on which SATA port they are plugged into, those labels will always be the same so that your MBR will always look at the right spot for where to boot up an OS. Easy way to explain is to look at my setup on which I am running linux. I have three SATA drives plugged into SATA1, 2, and 3. They get assigned sda, sdb, and sdc respectively. My MBR looks for the boot kernel on 1 of those 3 drives. If I went into my computer and swapped that one with another one it wouldn't know how to boot. Not too big of a deal since you won't often be swapping around your SATA cables. One issue that comes up is if you happen to plug in a new IDE device. Depending on your BIOS it may load up IDE before SATA (or maybe not) and thus bump your drives all up by one (new IDE=sda, old sda=sdb, old sdb=sdc, old sdc=sdd)

If you had a drive hooked up to SATA4 from the get go, when you booted from a Windows disc to install it should detect the drive and install it to the right place (along with the correctly configured MBR) so it shouldn't have to be on the first port.

As for the RAID, since it is mirrored your MBR can point to the correct spot on any of the identical partitions in order to boot so it shouldn't matter. As long as it is pointing to the correct drive in the first place. I have a RAID setup between SATA 1 and 2 (sda and sdb) on which I have two small mirror partitions holding my kernel, so I could set my bootloader to boot from either of them and nothing would change.

Marc

 

[Santuzzo]

I've never cared where my drive was put in.... I had my os drive after my storage for yrs, and its never been an issue.

Moving them can cause issues as the bios doesn't know where the os went.

Thanks !

Not necessarily. Well, maybe it does if you are using Windows but I should think not.

When the computer boots up it'll assign labels to the hard drives based on which SATA port they are plugged into, those labels will always be the same so that your MBR will always look at the right spot for where to boot up an OS. Easy way to explain is to look at my setup on which I am running linux. I have three SATA drives plugged into SATA1, 2, and 3. They get assigned sda, sdb, and sdc respectively. My MBR looks for the boot kernel on 1 of those 3 drives. If I went into my computer and swapped that one with another one it wouldn't know how to boot. Not too big of a deal since you won't often be swapping around your SATA cables. One issue that comes up is if you happen to plug in a new IDE device. Depending on your BIOS it may load up IDE before SATA (or maybe not) and thus bump your drives all up by one (new IDE=sda, old sda=sdb, old sdb=sdc, old sdc=sdd)

If you had a drive hooked up to SATA4 from the get go, when you booted from a Windows disc to install it should detect the drive and install it to the right place (along with the correctly configured MBR) so it shouldn't have to be on the first port.

As for the RAID, since it is mirrored your MBR can point to the correct spot on any of the identical partitions in order to boot so it shouldn't matter. As long as it is pointing to the correct drive in the first place. I have a RAID setup between SATA 1 and 2 (sda and sdb) on which I have two small mirror partitions holding my kernel, so I could set my bootloader to boot from either of them and nothing would change.

Marc

Thanks, Marc.

I have had it set up like this since I put this PC together, actually never really had a problem, but I was just thinking if it would be better performance-wise to actually have the boot-drive on the first SATA connector.

When I open up disc management it shows my RAID storage drive as disc 0 and my main disc (with the OS on it) as disc 1. I suppose, normally it should be the other way around?

If I swapped the connectors on my motherboard, would that only be an issue of re-adjusting the BIOS accordingly or could this really mess up Windows?

Thanks,
Lars