Can i use Marvell SATA 3 ports on Asus P8Z68-V PRO motherboard

[Bhumi]

Bought this new Asus P8Z68-V PRO motherboard and a new Marvell SATA 3 port, now planning to install them but I have one doubt. Just wanted to ask you whether it is possible for me to use Marvell SATA 3 (6 gb/sec) ports on this motherboard in order to run a RAID 1 array. Please let me know about it as soon as possible.

If its not possible then I will be surely needing one SSD for boot, OS, applications and probably two HDDs in the RAID1 array for storage purpose.

[GadhadharY]

I must admit one thing the port which you have mentioned is however very much perfect for connecting data drives. Suppose if you are required to put up some amount of large data drives then it would be very much convenient for you to have those ports in order to put them on. Also you will have to use two intel 6Gbps ports for any kind of SSD but specifically in your case I think you will have to get intel ports in order to get full TRIM support. You will also be using the four intel 3Gbps port for any optical or maybe other ATAPI type of devices. Overall I can only say that its very much beneficial for you to have a Marvell ports for data drives. Just wanted to ask you that for what purposes use this SATA 3 ports; if they are to get NCQ then SATA 3 is surely the best option for you rather than going for SATA2 ports.

[Cain]

Hey after reading some other important I can make out that the P8Z68V-Pro board is only support RAID1 on the SATAII ports and not the SATAIII Marvell ports. Not sure whether I am right or not but this is what I learned from other sources.

Recently I have built my system and I am try to get my 1 TB WD drives to RAID1 on this same board into the bios when hanged over to the Marvell ports. I thought if I read some detailed information I will at least get some idea but now after doing the same the case is completely different, instead of getting the detailed information I got very much confused with lot of things. The major doubt is whether 6.0gb/s HDDs is unable to use the 6.0gb/s SATAIII speeds. Anyways it would be a great help if you let me know how can do the following things:

• Intel 510 120GB SSD (SATAIII port 1 on Z68 controller)
• WD 1TB HDD (want to RAID 1 for data mirroring, SATA III port 1&2 on Marvell controller)
• WD 1.5TB (SATAIII port 2 on Z68 controller)

[Quasim]

let me tell you my friend, firstly in most of the cases the regular platter hard drives are completely unable to take the full advantage of SATA 3 speeds, they are actually not able to transfer data as fast as possible. Secondly the Marvell controller that is used by ASUS on the Z68 is however notable to get the RAID operation, you can find a different version that can do RAID but ASUS doesn’t use that for any sort of reason.

In this way at least you are not supposed to RAID the two 1TB drives. I personally think that you can simply RAID the intel SATA3 ports together and also intel SATA2 ports together but due to this I think you not be able to get the burner work properly if the SATA2 controller is in RAID mode, you can actually do not use the burner on the Marvell ports. Having this Asus board the only way you can do it is to have the two 1TB drives on the intel SATA3 ports in RAID mode.

[Geniee]

Hey I have tried a lot and after I messed up with certain things I have the intel SSD on the original SATA3 port and two HDD on SATA2 ports. And everything seems to be very well fine visually on the system after I get into the RAID1 HDD in the BIOS but at the time of windows starting up I can see the BSOD so fast that even I can see the message and from then onwards it continues to get the loop or rebooting which never ends up until and unless I turn off the machine. Till now the only solution I have got to get back to the working condition is in the BIOS and then reset the SATA mode back to AHCI and then don’t have it in the RAID mode for a longer time. And the negative thing is that I would never come to know whether this status is stil in RAID mode or not. I just wanted to know how can I tell this, the reason for such question is because it always look like 1 drive no matter its working or not.

[jamiejohn]

If you really want to get a fix for the issue similar to the one which is mentioned in this thread without even reinstalling windows after setting up the RAID you can go for the registry settings. Below are the registry settings you need to edit:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci\ Start
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Pciide\ Start
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV \Start

Before starting make sure that you enable the switching between all IDE/AHCI/RAID modes by changing "Start" Values in these keys to 0.

You need to change the above three values to 0 while you are in AHCI, once done reboot the system and then change the BIOS to RAID mode.

[sushantbankar]

I guess those registry changes are necessary only when you install the OS in IDE mode. Actually the thing is that I thought that the RAID drives were simply loaded when the OS was installed in AHC mode or maybe the possibility is that they were not loaded. But surely its very much useful and best thing to install in the RAID mode and then change to the other mode like IDE, AHCI, RAID after the installation. Noticed that after you put the BIOS in the RAID actually allows you to continue have RAID1 on the SATA2 ports and also an extra additional HDD on the marvell port. However for now everything is being played nicely after the registry changes. I must also say that this registry fix is far better than re-installing windows 7.

[Arun K]

I am not sure whether I am at the right place but I feel that my issue somehow matches the one posted over here. I have a problem with the same intel 510 but however I tried swapping into my laptop and therefore I left it there and then ordered an overclock for my built. The overclock is a Max IOPS (120GB) and therefore I use it as my boot/OS/App hooked up to one of the Intel SATA6 ports. After this I used two SATA3 ports that I am using for optical like Blue Ray and DVD burner. As far as I am concerned they worked fine but let me tell you I haven’t tried burning anything yet.

Now after this I noted that the spinners are not able to saturate a SATA2. Practically if you have two intel SATA6 ports for SSD which can probably raid and if you do not required anything beyond RAID1 with the SSD then everything is fine. Speaking about SATA3 they are very much advantageous for RAID spinners which probably cannot take the advantage of the throughput of SATA6 in anyway.

[raghini]

In order to get many sata ports you will probably have to wait for the X79 chipset which will have 10 SATA3 ports including 4 SATA2 ports without any requirements of extra controllers, however X79 is chipset is decided by intel whether to offer us mere mortal, that’s the reason it has huge number of multiple number threads.

Another thing is that you also have a possible option of installing the RAID controller, for this you just have to plugin the card with the correct number of SATA ports of the color and flavor. Also remember one thing, if you are suing a RAID on SSD then you are losing TRIM. Not sure with it but I hope the optical drives on the Marvell port do not cause you any such problem or issue in future. In my case till now I haven’t seen any kind of forcement of compelling reason for RAIDing my SSDs.