How do you use the SATA 6.0Gb/s ports

[raalvarezx]

I recently bought a ASUS P6X58D-E Motherboard and I tired to use 1 of the 2 SATA 6.0Gb/s ports with a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive, but I can't get the motherboard to recognize the Hard drive. It works fine in the other 6 SATA ports. How can I get my hard drive to work in the SATA 6.0Gb/s port?

 

[c_for]

If it works on the sata 3gb/s i would use that. I doubt you will notice any speed improvement using the 6gb/s even if you can get it working. 7200rpm hdds read/write speeds are lower than 3gb/s. From what i've read even most non-raid ssd's are slower than 3gb/s.

Analogy:
A go-cart will be just as fast on a highway as it will be on a go-cart track.

The 6gb/s sata are currently more for future proofing for upgrades than for currently available hardware.

 

[ejolesch]

c_for:

I know I can connect to the 3gb/s ports but I am running out of ports on my motherboard and want to use the 6gb/s ports too. Are the 6gb/s ports not backwards compatible?

Ejolesch

If it works on the sata 3gb/s i would use that. I doubt you will notice any speed improvement using the 6gb/s even if you can get it working. 7200rpm hdds read/write speeds are lower than 3gb/s. From what i've read even most non-raid ssd's are slower than 3gb/s.

Analogy:
A go-cart will be just as fast on a highway as it will be on a go-cart track.

The 6gb/s sata are currently more for future proofing for upgrades than for currently available hardware.

 

[Rainey]

c_for:

I know I can connect to the 3gb/s ports but I am running out of ports on my motherboard and want to use the 6gb/s ports too. Are the 6gb/s ports not backwards compatible?

Ejolesch

Yes the 6gb ports are backwards compatible.

I have heard that the WD black 6GB drives need a firmware upgrade to work on the Marvell ports. See if you can find a firmware update for your drive.

Search the ASUS forum for WD black and you will find a post about this issue.

 

[MRFS]

We have 2 x WD1002FAEX cabled to the ASUS PCIE GEN2 SATA6G expansion card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136533&Tpk=N82E16822136533

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131610&cm_re=N82E16813131610-_-13-131-610-_-Product


And, we configured an XP software RAID 0, for speed
chiefly because that expansion card is not a RAID controller.

So far, so good.


p.s. SATA/6G ports are useful for 6G rotating drives that
also have a large cache: when they are combined
in a RAID 0, their hardware caches are additive:
thus, 2 x WD1002FAEX ~= 128 MB of HDD hardware cache.

Here's a test we did with a small file chosen to fit
entirely within the combined HDD hardware caches
so we would be measuring only "buffer-to-host":

http://www.supremelaw.org/systems/io.tests/ASUS.PCIE.GEN2.SATA6G.96MB.read.2xHDD6G.XP.RAID0.bmp


MRFS