What Exactly Is The JMicron SATA Slot for On My Mobo?

[manooly]

I just recently purchased a whole new gaming rig. I bought the ASUS p7p55d-e pro motherboard that has a JMicron SATA slot on it. Right now I have a 320GB Western Digital 7200rpm hdd connected to that SATA slot on the mobo. When I boot up I see a screen flash saying that the 320GB drive is connected to the JMicron slot before going to Windows 7 (64bit).

What exactly is the JMicron slot for? Is It ok that I have a regular 320GB hdd connected to it? Should I put that hdd's SATA connector to one of the regular SATA slots instead? I haven't noticed any problems with speed for that hdd connected to the JMicron slot. I guess I'd like to learn more about what exactly the JMicron technology is for and if I should be using it with one of my regulat hdd's.

Any info would be appreciated. Thanks for your time!

- manooly

 

[treefrog07]

Jmicron is another controller for SATA (and usually a PATA/IDE) for 2 additional SATA drives and two IDE drives. It is kind of a transition to allow the use of older IDE optical drives or HDDs. You can boot from it (as you know). I prefer my SATA HDDs the intel matrix manager for RAID, which are the "other" SATA connectors. There should some instruction in your motherboard manual, and some more info here.