My z210 motherboard has the following SATA connectors:
blue connector marked SATA0 running @ 6Gb/s
blue connector marked SATA1 running @ 6Gb/s
black connector marked SATA2 running @ 3Gb/s
black connector marked SATA3 running @ 3Gb/s
black connector marked SATA4 running @ 3Gb/s
black connector marked SATA5 running @ either 3Gb/s or 1.5Gb/s (via eSATA BIOS setting)
AFAIK, these SATA ports are wired through the C206 cougar point chipset and the connected HDD's are managed by the Intel IRST driver. It's a very basic embedded RAID solution i guess.
Within the z210 tower case, I have 3x WD6000HLHX HDD's (600GB drives), a LG BD optical drive as well as an Intel 520 series 120GB SSD installed. The SSD is loose within a free 5.25" bay and will be fixed once i find a suitable bracket. I also have a passive eSATA card installed on the PCIe backplate (blocks the x1 PCIe slot) and i have connected the card to power, USB and the eSATA port set @ 1.5Gb/s.
Previously, i had the OS installed to the SSD which was connected to SATA2 while the 2x HDD were defined as RAID 1 hanging from SATA0 & SATA1.
Now it's time for a change so I want to run the OS from the SSD and use the 3x HDD's for my data (configured as RAID5). But the HP maintenance and Services guide is a little lax on accurate specifics as to how things should be cabled for greatest efficiency.
Basically i'm trying to achieve better throughput with a SSD + RAID5 configuration than i had with the previous SSD + RAID1 configuration (and get a litle more space on my data volume).
So i have a few questions in my mind:
1. which SATA ports are the best to use for connecting SSD and why?
2. Which are the best ports to use for the 3x HDD in RAID5 and why?
3. Can one split the 3x HDD's across 6GB/s and 3Gb/s SATA ports and does that compromise the data throughput or data integrety in any way?