5 Hard Drives (1 SSD, 3 HDD, 1 NVMe SSD) and 1 DVD/CD Blu-Ray Drive on Z370 Taichi, confused on lane usage

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buoll

Mar 4, 2018
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I am currently upgrading my rig to an i7 8700k and ddr4 memory, and all that's fine, but now I have some confusion on storage usage of the SATA lanes (is that even correct terminology?). I am planning on buying the ASRock z370 Taichi, and a 6TB WD Black HDD, which brings my hard drive and DVD/CD drive count to:
1 x 1TB WD Blue HDD
1 x 3TB WD Black HDD
1 x 250GB Samsung 960 EVO NVMe SSD (OS drive)
1 x 128GB Samsung 850 PRO SSD
1 x LG Black Blu-ray Burner SATA WH16NS40
1 x 6TB WD Black HDD (ordering)
total drives = 6

My question is, is it possible to have all these drives connected and running, without stealing any bandwidth from each other? My confusion is coming from the specification on the storage from ASRock, and from the website (bolded where I don't understand what it is telling me):

- 6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, Intel® Rapid Storage Technology 15), NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug*
- 2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by ASMedia ASM1061, support NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug
- 2 x Ultra M.2 Sockets (M2_1 and M2_2), support M Key type 2242/2260/2280/22110 M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s module and M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen3 x4 (32 Gb/s)**
- 1 x Ultra M.2 Socket (M2_3), supports M Key type 2242/2260/2280 M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s module and M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen3 x4 (32 Gb/s)**

*M2_1, SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.
M2_2, SATA3_4 and SATA3_5 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.
If M2_3 is occupied by a SATA-type M.2 device, SATA3_3 will be disabled.

**Type 22110 M.2 module is supported with either M2_1 or M2_2 socket.
Supports Intel® Optane™ Technology
Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks
Supports ASRock U.2 Kit

If anyone can explain this to me, I would greatly appreciate it. On a side note, if I can't run all of these, what's the point of having so many ports if they just disable each other?
Quick update: I would like to put the WD Black's in a Raid configuration (never done it) and use the Blue for back up. Any additional comments on this would be appreciated.
 
Solution
SoNic67
That's exactly what the manual was telling you. One SATA3 device is the ASMedia ASM1061 chip (with two ports), separated from the internal intel SATA3 ports.
Some of those SATA ports share PCI-E lanes with the M.2 slot, as described in your bolded text, so you can't have both enabled. SATA ports are numbered on the MoBo.

PS: In my experience, intel RAID (software, via drivers) is not as fast as a native/hardware RAID controller.
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jacobweaver800

jacobweaver800

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Well, for starters all the Sata ports should work just fine, as for the raid setup, if your running both black drives in raid for a total of 9tb's, you need AT LEAST 9tb's for backup, once you try a backup it will write to the 1tb blue and just over write itself and you'll lose the whole backup, that or it will fail completely and not do anything at all, you might be better off running the 3tb black and the blue in raid and using your new 6tb for backup.
 
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jacobweaver800

jacobweaver800

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Well, for starters all the Sata ports should work just fine, as for the raid setup, if your running both black drives in raid for a total of 9tb's, you need AT LEAST 9tb's for backup, once you try a backup it will write to the 1tb blue and just over write itself and you'll lose the whole backup, that or it will fail completely and not do anything at all, you might be better off running the 3tb black and the blue in raid and using your new 6tb for backup.
 
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buoll

Mar 4, 2018
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So there won't be any bandwidth stealing on the hard drives? Still would like to know exactly what it means by "M2_1, SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.".
As for the back up, I was only going to back up the SSD's, as those are the only ones with any vital data. The WD Black's will be mainly games and other media.
 
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buoll

Mar 4, 2018
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I plugged my build into pcpartpicker and I am getting incompatibility issues (https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Buoll/saved/NqfLD3):
– 1 additional SATA 1.5 Gb/s compatible port is needed.
– 1 additional SATA 6 Gb/s compatible port is needed.
– The motherboard M.2 slot #1 shares bandwidth with SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports. When the M.2 slot is populated, two SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports are disabled.
– The motherboard M.2 slot #2 shares bandwidth with SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports. When the M.2 slot is populated, two SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports are disabled.
– The motherboard M.2 slot #3 shares bandwidth with a SATA 6.0 Gb/s port. When the M.2 slot is populated, one SATA 6.0 Gb/s port is disabled.
 
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SoNic67

SoNic67

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That's exactly what the manual was telling you. One SATA3 device is the ASMedia ASM1061 chip (with two ports), separated from the internal intel SATA3 ports.
Some of those SATA ports share PCI-E lanes with the M.2 slot, as described in your bolded text, so you can't have both enabled. SATA ports are numbered on the MoBo.

PS: In my experience, intel RAID (software, via drivers) is not as fast as a native/hardware RAID controller.
 
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Solution
jacobweaver800

jacobweaver800

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Well, since your planning on using one of the M.2 slots 2 of the sata ports are disabled. I would try moving all the data from your 3 hard drives and getting something like a 12 Tb Iron Wolf or Iron Wolf Pro drive from Seagate, that should free up some slots and then you have drives left over for a different pc or just to sell.
 
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SoNic67

SoNic67

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I am not the OP, so I am planning nothing...
 
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jacobweaver800

jacobweaver800

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I know you aren't I just quoted that because its useful information.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Quick update: I would like to put the WD Black's in a Raid configuration
Click to expand...

Hang on....
1 x 3TB WD Black HDD +1 x 6TB WD Black HDD...

RAID 1 (mirrored) with those drives = 3TB RAID array.
RAID 0 (striped) with those drives = 6TB RAID array.

You really, really need to read up on the various RAID levels and what they do and do not do.
 
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jacobweaver800

jacobweaver800

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Well, Raid 0 is the fastest, but if you lose any drive in the raid all the data is gone. Raid 5 is generally the safest as you can lose up to one drive to lose anything, you can then replace any bad drives and tell it to start rebuilding the broken drive. It will store everything across multiple drives using a parity so if one dies it can rebuild the dead drive, just make sure more than one doesn't die.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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And from your statement:
"if your running both black drives in raid for a total of 9tb's"

RAID 0 does not work like that. It is not fully additive.
2x the size of the smallest.

RAID 5 requires at least 3 drives. And again, mismatched drive sizes don't work well.
 
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jacobweaver800

jacobweaver800

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Maybe UnRaid? It does support multiple size drives.
 
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jacobweaver800

jacobweaver800

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This is true, a small add-in card can use up one of your 1x slots on your board and give you some more sata ports, or you could get an M.2 expansion card and use all the drives on the sata ports and put your m.2 drive over PCI-E. Get which ever is cheaper.
 
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SoNic67

SoNic67

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Personally I am advising against any form of RAID 0. It's a receipt to lose data. Plus the Intel RAID, being software will have a very crappy performance in real life (like CPU utilized by a video rendering in the same time it tries to save on the RAID).

I have a dedicated RAID card, with it's own processor (PowerPC 405), and three HDD in RAID 5. Almost the same speed as RAID0, but with redundancy.
 
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jacobweaver800

jacobweaver800

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https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA86V3DZ5905&cm_re=internal_sata_expansion_card-_-9SIA86V3DZ5905-_-Product
this one is a cheap card and will give you 2 internal sata 6gb/s ports or fi you need more than that you'll need some sort of raid card to have more IDK Y.
 
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jacobweaver800

jacobweaver800

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Interesting, but then were back to a raid solution, which has it's own set of problems.
 
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mdd1963

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On some boards (My Asus Z270 Prime is this way), the first NVME/PCIx4 M.2 slot can share (at half bandwidth) or disable two SATA ports (typically 5 and 6). The 2nd NVME port, if used, again can run at half bandwidth or full BW disabling 2 more SATA ports (1 and 2).

Presumably you'd want to share when possible, given your desire to use 5 SATA devices...
 
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mdd1963

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If you wish to not contend with sharing (although realistically, how often is the DVD port used anymore?) might be best to just just sell off the smallish devices and get one 4-8 TB storage drive, and one 500 GB - 1 TB SSD...

Use free cloud storage (DropBox, One Drive, Box, P-Cloud, Good Drive, Asus Web, etc...) to backup important stuff in 2 different locations.
 
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jacobweaver800

jacobweaver800

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I would use the M.2 drive in the M.2 slot on your board which will disable 2 sata ports, 5 and 6 i believe, witch leaves you with 4 other ports, so drop the 1tb drive and just run the rest and you should be fine, or you can sell the 1tb and 3tb and get another 6tb if you really need the storage.
 
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SoNic67

SoNic67

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As opposed to what? There is no good way to "combine" those drives and not face some kind of reliability problem. RAID5 is by far a better option.
 
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jacobweaver800

jacobweaver800

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I do agree RAID 5 is one of the best options, but can't the OP just use them as stand alone drives instead of striping them together in RAID? That's what I would do, I'm far from an expert on storage stuff, but im not exactly wrong here am I?
 
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