[RESOLVED] SATA Ports

[Nix]

My new pc has:
250GB drive on SATA port 0
250GB drive on SATA port 1
DVDRW / CDRW Combo on SATA port 2

Would I be better off moving the second HD on to SATA port 3 or is the IO contention not an issue with SATA the same as it was with IDE ?

I'm guessing that since all the cables are single plug, and each has it's own cabel then they are all effectively master devices ?

Also even though I have disable the on board raid so as to get back 250GB of disk space, if I was to reanable it at some stage, do the two HDs need to be on adajacent ports eg 0 and 1 or 2 and 3 ??

[SuperSparks]

Each device is effectively the master, and it makes no difference whatever channel you put the devices on - the bandwidth is determined by the SATA controller (150Mb/sec for SATA1, and 300Mb/sec for SATA2).

As to the RAID question, it really depens on what ports are available for RAID. If there are more than 2 ports available to the array then I would expect the controller to pick up whatever drives are attached, irrespective of the exact port that they are on.

[Nix]

Thanks for that.

When I had a drive on port 0 and the other on port 4 it wouldn't pick it up for raid availabiilty.

When i put them on port 0 and port 1 both were available for raid.

It then came up with a message about raid being degraded and did I want to delete the array data - which I thought meant info pertaining to the raid set up.

Guess what happened when I answered Y and rebooted

Have just spent the last 2 days reinstalling back to where I was at 3 weeks ago when I recieved the system.

[SuperSparks]

Hmmmm, it sounds like you've got a striped array there. I dislike striped arrays intensly - the are a disaster waiting to happen, just like in this case. And you really don't gain much in any case (with some controllers you don't gain anything at all). IMO you'd be far better off unRAIDing those drives and just use them as independent drives.

[Nix]

Yes that's what I did, truned off raid in the BIOS and now using all 500GB on my two drives.

At least I know that I have all the relevant CDs, DVDs etc to reinstall to like new.

And i could decide what to install rather than getting bogged down with all the Dell installed software.

[SuperSparks]

Talking of Dell installed software, have you seen this tool?

http://www.yorkspace.com/pc-de-crapifier/

[Nix]

Of those listed I had these, but didn't reinstall the bolded ones.

* Norton Ghost 10.0
* Symantec Live Update
* Norton Internet Security
* Google Desktop
* Norton AntiVirus 2006
* Norton Security Center
* Norton AntiSpam
* Roxio RecordNow
* Sonic DLA
* Sonic Update Manager
* Sonic RecordNow Audio
* Sonic RecordNow Copy
* Roxio MyDVD LE
* Microsoft Works