Skylarking,
In summary, use the blue 6GB/s connections for the SSD and drives that need performance and any RAID should be as a group all on black 3GB/s connections.
The z210 has SATA connectors: SATA 0 and SATA1: 2X 6GB/s (Blue), SATA 2 and SATA3: 2X 3GB/s and 1X 3GB/s SATA 4(Black) of which SATA4 which can also be eSATA.
Example connections:
The Intel 520 SSD for the OS / programs should be on SATA 0 which is blue and 6GB/s.
Other drives that are in a RAID need to be on the same controller, so the OS/programs SSD would be SATA 0 and a 3-drive RAID 5 for storage,would be on SATA 2,3,4 as a group on the 3GB/s connections.
More complex combinations: If there is an OS / programs SSD for active projects and another SSD as a scratch disk to load libraries and save active projects quickly, plus a RAID 1 for backup/archiving, then the OS/ program drive is on SATA 0, the scratch disk is on SATA1 (6GB/s) , and as a seperate group, the RAID 1 on SATA2 and SATA3. For a RAID 0 for the OS/Programs, that would mean drives on SATA 0 and SATA 1 6GB/s and the other drives on the 3GB/s connections SATA 2,3,and 4 as seperate drives or as a three drive RAID 5.
The number of SATA3 6GB/s connection can be exapanded by using a PCIe RAID controller and have a separate RAID 0,1, and/or 5 all in 6GB/s connections. In reality, SATA2 mechanical drives can't really saturate SATA2, but SSD's can give SATA3 6GB's a run and more- there are some 12 GB/s RAID controllers like the LSI MR9361- shich can chain together 125 SAS drives!, and current M.2 , the HP Z Turbo Drive are PCIe x4- (use 4 PCIe lanes).
Cheers,
BambiBoom_Z
z420 (E5-1660v2)
z420 (E5-1620)
z620 (2X E5-2690)
Elite M9426F (Core 2 Quad Q6600)