Expanding storage space, but I have only 1 SATA 6Gb/s

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nanookilla

Commendable
Sep 16, 2016
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Hi, I am fairly bad with PC hardware so sorry if this is really stupid question (actually questions, there are several).

I need to expand my internal storage space of my desktop. I want to buy 3 TB HDD for bulk storage (mainly videos) that I would have alongside my current 1TB HDD that has all software on it. Problem is my motherboard only has one SATA 6 Gb/s and 2x 3Gb/s.

I want reading from both HDDs to be as fast as possible. What is better thing to do?
Connect new bulk storage HDD to 6 Gb/s and put my software HDD to 3 Gb/s or other way around.
In the future I am planning on buying SSD for software. How should I plug it in then? SSD to 6 Gb/s or to 3 Gb/s?


Current setup:
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-M PRO
Current HDD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 1TB

Bonus question: Any advice for installing new HDD and/or moving current HDD from one SATA port to another? Will my PC recognize it automatically or will I have to do some stuff in BIOS?

Thank you
 
Solution
FD2Raptor
Uh, first, if you didn't make a mistake with your MB model, it should have:

2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), gray
4 x SATA 3Gb/s port(s), blue
Click to expand...

as per ASUS specification for the P8Z77-M PRO.
Perhaps you didn't notice that each of the SATA housing provide 2x SATA ports?

Second, most HDD can't saturate the SATA2 bandwidth, so there's really no speed advantage to having them on SATA3.

SSD on the other hand, can totally saturate the SATA2 bandwidth, and the top performing models are even bottle-necked by SATA3 bandwidth (which is the reason ppl were looking to M2.NVMe/PCIe as the next gen high speed storage interface).

On installing new HDD/SSD:
Most MB will automatically detect and assign order to the new drive based on the SATA...
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FD2Raptor

FD2Raptor

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Mar 5, 2014
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Uh, first, if you didn't make a mistake with your MB model, it should have:

2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), gray
4 x SATA 3Gb/s port(s), blue
Click to expand...

as per ASUS specification for the P8Z77-M PRO.
Perhaps you didn't notice that each of the SATA housing provide 2x SATA ports?

Second, most HDD can't saturate the SATA2 bandwidth, so there's really no speed advantage to having them on SATA3.

SSD on the other hand, can totally saturate the SATA2 bandwidth, and the top performing models are even bottle-necked by SATA3 bandwidth (which is the reason ppl were looking to M2.NVMe/PCIe as the next gen high speed storage interface).

On installing new HDD/SSD:
Most MB will automatically detect and assign order to the new drive based on the SATA plug it was connected to (SATA port 1st-6th). If your boot HDD was not connected to the higher priority port (e.g. boot HDD on SATA-5 and newer HDD on SATA-4, the system may just look at the newer drive on SATA-4 instead of the one on SATA-5), and in this case you may need to go into BIOS/UEFI and change the boot order.

On changing SATA port of HDD/SSD:
It is advisable to not change the SATA port of your boot device (HDD or SSD) since depends on the MB, sometime this may affect the order of the drives causing booting issues. If your boot HDD is on SATA3, when you get a SSD, you can clone the boot drive to the SSD, and then swap the SATA port.
 
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Solution
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nanookilla

Commendable
Sep 16, 2016
5
0
1,510
Perhaps you didn't notice that each of the SATA housing provide 2x SATA ports?
Click to expand...
That's exactly what I did and now I feel stupid. Thank you.

With all that I will just get new HDD, plug it into SATA 3 and when I eventually get SSD I will plug it in SATA 3 and move old HDD to SATA 2.
 
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