I built this system back in October of 2010 and though I've built several systems over the past couple of decades this was my first in 7 years so this whole process has been one wide learning curve. It's been fun and I love being exposed to new insights that lead to new possibilities. Sometimes it just takes a little nudge to get me out of my old ways of thinking in regards to how systems should be configured. It's real easy to just accept something as is simply because that's the way you've always done it.

It can't be stressed enough of how much I appreciate everyone's input.

After doing some research I think I understand for the most part about how some of the features of a RAID setup would benefit me. I'm going to go poke around the BIOS for a moment so I'll probably come back with some specific questions.

On that note...

Oh, and while I'd love to get my hands on an SSD drive the sad fact is that I've been unemployed for the past 6 months so my bank account has just about washed away. There's just no way in hell the lady is going to allow me to come home with another computer related item that cost anything over $0...I couldn't convince her to allow me to purchase Skyrim until roughly 1 hour before the midnight opening. And I'm not even married. Or engaged for that matter...just broke as can be. On a lighter note, I finally got a job that should start relatively soon.

Now where's that confounded spell checker?

I went into the BIOS and ended up cleaning out the inside of my system...now she looks as if I just built her last night.

At any rate, I wanted to double check the MB connections and I ended up removing a couple to ports that I just don't use. Such as the rear IEEE 1394a and JMicron SATAe as well as the two frontside SATAe controller ports. I saw an option to disable both of them in BIOS so unless I hear otherwise that's exactly what I'm going to do.

There has always been something that has bothered me about my hard drive connection though...it has the proper cable in the proper places but I can't find any reference to it in the BIOS, which only shows SATA 1 thru 6 with my DVD listed but nothing regarding SATA 6GB 1 or 2. I've looked throughout but couldn't find any mention of it anywhere but it obviously works. Having said that, I've always felt like it should work better so maybe I'm just missing the keys in my hand. Or would the Intel RST resolve this issue for me via its own GUI?

Speaking of hard drives...I only found two references to mode in the BIOS:

• Main - Configure SATA as...IDE (default / current) or RAID or AHCI
  
• Advanced - Marvell Storage Controller...IDE Mode (default / current) or AHCI Mode

I'm guessing that I either want both of those set to AHCI or at least the first with the second disabled? Then I'm guessing that the Intel RST will enlighten me further?

I'm at the point where I really want to proceed but at the same time it's not too late to go backwards if necessary. I just want to make sure that I'm not going to miss something before I realize it.

yes disable the devices and ports that you don't use..

on the machine i build.. i disable the internal jmicron or marvel SATA ports.. that have no use/function unless your running out of places to plug in drives...

Some of them are setup with one internal port and one external port (backplate port) so disabling the controller entirely will also disable that back port too.

no big deal.... re-enabling it isn't hard.

Doesn't matter what you do though, Raid is my suggested Number one mode.... if raid isn't an option then pick AHCI... there are only a few boards/computers/laptops in which all they have for a choice is enhanced IDE or Compatibility IDE... for the sata ports...... erg..

Obviously if you disable the Marvell storage controller... you won't have to set ide/ahci... it'll disappear or should just be turned off.

For the intel... i'm HOPING your running AHCI or RAID mode already.. if your still running IDE..... erg.. your best chance of changing this is by going here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976 and downloading the fix it OR by doing the registry changes manually.. (the fix it works slick i've tested it)..... followed by saving your work.. restarting and entering the bios.. switching it to AHCI mode.. and then starting windows followed by installing the Rapid storage controller drivers.

Last few times i've tried.. i've been unsuccessful trying to move from IDE OR AHCI to RAID mode... raid generally will require you to install windows from scratch... no amount of manual repair will seem to do anything.... AHCI/Raid will give you the same performance otherwise though.. so no worries.

As for your 6gbps modes... you can't change these in the bios.... on the board the first 2 ports should appear a different color to the other 4 in most Intel based systems that are capable of SATA III... as long as your drives are plugged into that port using the motherboard SUPPIED SATA 6gbps (SATA III) cable.... you'll be fine...... just please.. do not use the SATA III cable with a hardrive that isn't sata III.... This can cause data corruption due to a very small change in the cable design.... Why they did this and didn't confirm backward capability is beyond me.... but it's apparent they knew because they don't ship you with nothing but sata III cables...

IMO the best setup is to have the Primary SATA III 6gbps drives on sata port 0/1 (first 2 differently colored ports) and then plugging in non SATA III drives into the other 4 ... usually i put the DVD/CD/BR drive on the last port (sata 5)

Once you have AHCI mode active and the rapid storage controller installed.... may require you to reboot once or twice..... open the rapid storage controller control panel and you'll be able to see the device serials and IDs as well as there opperating mode (sata 1/2/3) ... also be able to see if NCQ is enabled or not.... etc..

also should experience a noticeable improvement in speed. If you don't.. may be the initial IDE mode you were using that is still bogging it down... i've seen stranger things happen.

I had this problem too...had setup AHCI at windows install. Until I found RAIDfix (http://www.geek-republic.com/tag/bios-raid-fix/). I was super skeptical, and had prepared for the worst (a total reinstall of OS), but worked perfectly. I setup my hardware Raid0, ran all the speed tests, and haven't looked back since.

hmmm i'm going to see what happens tomorrow with this quick fix

looks promising.

Dinner just arrived so I'll elaborate shortly but for now...looks like it will be RAID 0 so I'll check out those links but I'm also prepared to re-install considering all that I've done so far is to install & update.

I should just try it out knowing that I could always just re-install in the worst case. What are the recommended speed tests so that I'll know that it's working properly?

I'll disable that other crap in BIOS first though as it should possibly cause the system to boot quicker in the least.

@ BTN...I think that I figured out my USB 3.0 issue. Seems that only 2 ports in the back are 3.0 while the 2 on top that I've been using are only 2.0 so I'll test this out and report back.

@ Everyone Else...more insight is always appreciated so please feel free to chime in at any time.

Well, I like CrystalDiskMark for specific disk write speed testing, and HD Tune Pro for all other tests (mainly read tests). You can benchmark your drive before RAID, then do the same tests after the Raid is setup. The actual improvement will depend on your hardware, and how many disks you have in your array. I have mine built for fast writing of very large files (video rendering), not efficiency of drive space, so my data chunks are really big.

Ahh yes for sure USB 3 is still new and being eased in and yah limited amounts of them vs the USB 2.0 ports, that'd explain the transfer rates on your external in the past for sure if it was sitting in a 2.0 rather then one of the 3.0s. On the sata ports that's a pain that they by default were setup as legacy IDE, yah AHCI or with Intel controllers raid mode are the optimal setup for sure and in the long run indeed worth the annoyance of going through this installation one more time with that mode in play.

Sorry for the multi-posts as opposed to multi-quotes but it's very difficult keeping all this organized for a reply with having to use the scroll bars so often in VGA mode. And sorry for my spelling as I can't seem to get spell check to work and I'm a horrible speller. If I don't reply specifically to something or someone please don't take offense and rest assured I'm absorbing everything that is posted. Lastly, sorry to have turned this thread into more of a blog but it has been great getting such awesome advice so I feel compelled to continue posting my progress until it's all done.


Only one issue...

It appears as if the second mode option that I mentioned earlier is crucial to my system since it wouldn't boot without it enabled. So I'm guessing that:

• Main - Configure SATA as...might refer to just SATA 1-6, in which case I could probably just leave them to IDE since I don't have anything but the DVD connected to them (it's on SATA 3 btw).
  
• Advanced - Marvell Storage Controller...might refer to my SATA III 1-2, in which case it would control my main, and only, internal hard drive.

Otherwise, the other ports have been disabled both physically and in BIOS.

I'm looking at running some benchmarks in IDE mode as suggested so that I can compare once I've made the change. I'll probably mess around with trying to "fix" the issue without a re-install, however I'll probably just do a fresh re-install anyways once I get my head around everything a little better.

I'm leaning towards RAID 0 but I might be limited to AHCI if in fact the Marvell Controller is as I mention above since it only has IDE Mode or AHCI Mode. I'm reading the motherboard manual again right now in regards to hard drive configurations so I'll see what it claims I should be able to do.

Yes, the ports are different colors and I double checked the cables as well. I remember when I first built the system that I struggled over the whole 3GB/6GB Port/Cable issue for at least an hour before figuring it all out. I had actually read about the issues you mentioned so I made sure to pick the right setup initially and all is still good in that regard.

I still need to learn more about the difference between RAID0, RAID1, and AHCI as I'm still not exactly sure which would be my best choice and whether or not I should partition. I've always partitioned but last night I re-installed with only one large partition because quite frankly:

• I'm worried about installing games on a non-system partition. Is having a game installed on D:\ partition with files automatically placed in several different C:\ partition locations as well going to cause issues? Is it even something to be concerned over? I'm not worried about other applications outside of games since I install those to their default locations (which would still be on the system partition) or other files suchi as music, pictures, etc since those will be on the external drive. Just games. Am I thinking too wrongly about this?
  
• BumpInTheNight makes a compelling arguement.

I'm not regretting the decision, I'm just wondering...Hmmm.

Excellent. I just downloaded both and I'm going to do some benchmarking now.

I'm not sure if this is a legit request or not but if you or anyone else would / could post your Raid structure in outline form so that I can better visual what you all have going on that would be great. I'm not sure if that even makes sense.

If I'm not concerned about drive space would Fast Writing be best for a gaming system?

It's looking like everyone agrees that RAID mode is the way to go. I'm assuming right now from my limited knowledge on the subject that I want 0 over 1 and if I can't for some odd reason have that then AHCI is better than IDE. I have this feeling that my hard drive performance is about to go through the roof. I've always been most un-impressed with it in relation to the hype I read about it before making the purchase. I'm hoping that it was just my ignorance all along as opposed to it being just, well...un-impressive.

Speaking of ignorance...I can't wait to test out the back USB ports. And here I was thinking that 200 GB in 4 hours was good. Hey, I was comparing it to a system that I had built 7 years earlier (USB 1 maybe?). I'll be sure to update this issue regardless of the outcome.

Lastly, I have always been a partition kinda person until last night when I decided to heed your advice and go with one large drive. I felt really good about it all until I woke up this afternoon and read what DHJudas had to say about the subject. Now I'm not discounting anything that you've made rather clear but I have to admit that I'm leaning back towards partitioning. It's looking like I'll be re-installing again anyways so I was wondering if you had anything else to add or if maybe both agruements have nearly equal merit so it might come down to personal need / desire?

At any rate, I'm excitedly off to run some benchmarks. I had nearly forgotten how much fun this can all be.

You've got a 1TB drive and a 500GB drive, this isn't something you're going to be using RAID abilities with but for intentions may as well tell the controller to behave like it so that you get the modern performance of AHCI really and that's it.

RAID is for multiple disks working together as a 'single disk' as per what the operating system sees, ie with my 2x500GB raid0 that's two drives that windows sees as a single 1TB drive with the data equally striped across them so that when I access a file its reading and writing half from each disk and essentially doubling the speed its doing that task. My other raid is a 5 implementation which is more elaborate in which there is fault tolerance built into that stripping so while I have 4x1TB my effective disk as windows sees it is 3TB (disksize*(quantity-1)), the benefit of that raid setup is if one disk dies then the method in which the data is written to the disks can kick in when I replace it to basically figure out what the dead disk held.

You are going to set your 1TB drive's sata port to raid just to ensure that its using a modern method of accessing this disk, not actually using any of the raid concepts since again that's for combining multiple disks to function as one logical disk as far as windows sees it. Savvy?

Edit: Caveat, not all optical drives like or work with their sata port set to a raid or AHCI mode, just a prewarning in case you run into problems and you happen to have your DVD or bluray drive's port setup as such. At this point I actually prefer to use older IDE based DVD drives since that gives me another sata port to stuff a drive into, the read rates off those guys are so low that they really don't benefit at all from sata controller's abilities so not much reason not to use an otherwise useless IDE based controller on a motherboard that's got one.

PS: I also agree this forum's quick reply editor's lack of integrated spell check bugs the crap out of me too
PPS: My 4x1TB drive array are those Black edition drives like the one you've got, love 'em

So what you guys are saying, is if you have 1 SATA 3 hard drive, and 1 SATA 2 hard drive, and they're not in actual Raid format, if you change the configuration in bios to AHCI or Raid, you will have better performance? (even though you won't be using a raid array?)

Quick edit: obviously I'm not talking fps in games but general read/write speeds, game load times, and perhaps just maybe smoother grid transitions in Beth games?

It's been a long night of benchmarking, experimentation, and research. Here's a recap...

I went ahead and changed over to RAID mode without re-installing. I had RAIDfix downloaded and ready but the simple registry tweak worked. There were a couple things that stand out over the process:

1. It appears to have worked since I was able to install Intel Matrix Storage and it shows everything as expected. It won't allow me to do anything other than see some stats and I can't enter it via Ctrl+I during POST but I'm guessing that that is due to me only having a single drive so I should be able to or have to worry about creating any arrays. Another sign that it has been installed is the new entry in Device Manager - Intel ICH8R...SATA RAID Controller.

2. So I figured that I'd test the speed and I was surprised to see that they were actually lower than before. This might be where a fresh install might help as mentioned previously in this thread.

3. There's a new Service (Intel Matrix Storage Event Monitor) & a new StartUp item (RAID Event Monitor) running. I have no idea if these can / should be disabled or whether they might be the cause of the slower test speeds.

So I was poking around the net for info on my specific drive and I came across some confusing numbers. It seems that every WD Caviar Black has 6 GB/s or 3 GB/s listed as their Max Transfer Rates (as expected) except for two of them which had 126 MB/s (one of which was mine). My IDE benchmark came it at 134 MB/s max while my RAID benchmark came in at 117 mb/s max. I ran several test of course and these were the best scores among them all.

Something that struck me as odd is that earlier when I disabled BIOS - Advanced - Marvell Storage Controller the system wouldn't boot as it couldn't find a hard drive with a operating system on it. So I was assuming that that was in control of my WD HD which lead me to change it to AHCI mode after I set the BIOS - Main - Configure SATA as...RAID but the system only BSOD after that. Never could get back into windows so I went back to IDE mode for now. Not sure how that will effect the test speeds either. I haven't done so yet but I'm considering testing with both set to AHCI and/or the Main set to IDE with the Advanced set to AHCI. Not sure if testing these parameters would be worth the effort though.

Speaking of Marvell I was trying to sort out the drivers that I downloaded from ASUS. I couldn't find any newer versions anywhere so I installed both of what I downloaded. The first one was supposedly for my WD HD as it added a Device Manager entry as well as the drive to my Device Notification Icon on the taskbar (Safely Remove...). I'm pretty sure that I wanted this one (it was the Marvell 91xx Controller driver mentioned earlier in this thread). The other one however was the Marvell 61xx SATA Controller Driver and while I ended up installing it I'm not so sure that I needed to.

This sorta repeats itself with the USB 3.0 Host Controller drivers that I downloaded from ASUS where there is a NEC and a Renesas (no newer versions either). It appears as if the Renesas is newer and is from after they took over NEC, which is what I've been lead to believe recently happened. So I just went with the Renesas for now. Not really sure if that was the right choice but here's the issue regarding my external 3.0 drive...it gets the same exact speeds before the driver was installed and no matter its plug in port as it does now (34 MB/s). The data sheet claims 60 MB/s for USB 2 and 600 MB/s for USB3.

I think I'm just getting confused with all the numbers. I'm a math student so I'm usually pretty good with them but living without PC gaming for the past couple of days is taking its toll. At least I think I finally understand that I'm trying to set up RAID for certain advantages that don't include setting up an array. At least I think I do.

BTW, completely jealous of that setup you described there BumpInTheNight. Very nice. Also, I found out that the only thing worse than not having spell check is having the one and only spell check addon for IE9. Since I plan on starting over fresh again I broke down and installed IE9 and my graphic drivers. One's a Godsend while the other not so much. Probably pretty easy to figure out which is which.

@ B1gBadDaddy...that's the impression that I get.

Okie, Intel Storage Matrix: A UI to yah the Intel sata controller, leave it up since if I remember correctly it also has some SMART capability(a protocol that watches the health of a disk and can help anticipate if its on its death bed before its too late). That whole 3.0 vs 6.0 thing is probably the most misleading marketing method of the HDD makers yet. See there's been three versions of sata controllers so far and they each have a maximum bandwidth that the controller is able to talk to all of the HDDs its responsible for at any given time. Sata1: 1.5gb, sata2: 3gb and sata3: 6gb. This value is pretty much meaningless though on HDDs since they can no where nearly approach that sort of bandwidth like some of the newest of SSDs can, unless you start raiding the HDDs together for instance to increase certain traits of the group's abilities. Your HDD's effective sustained read & write should be close to the 75-100MB mark. Basically; pay 0 attention to that sata controller's limits as you'll never approach them with that HDD and yah HDD marketing teams should be given a thousand paper cuts for throwing that confusion into the mix of an already very confusing world for non-IT people shopping for parts.

I do agree that the speed you reading off of that USB 3.0 drive does seem a little low, sounds like what would happen if they stuffed a weak 5400RPM drive into the mix instead of a proper drive that could take advantage of the USB 3.0 speeds, without popping that enclosure open though there isn't really a way to find out I don't think (I rarely use externals, can't remember if you can glean the model number of the drive from somewhere when its plugged in). Aie I loves me raids, thanks bud Btw they aren't all smiles and high fives though, raids come with their own annoyances too such as you're pretty much stuck now using that raid with only that controller (or family if you're lucky) so migrating them just doesn't work typically. The sheer size of them is annoying too, I mean making a simple 2 disk raid0 is one thing but when it comes to finding a home for four drives inside of most cases you're starting to get a little cramped. I actually ended up buying a 3rd party enclosure thingy that sits in the space where the 5.25" bays go and converts 3 of them into four 3.5" HDD bays just because I haven't got the room for them anywhere else.

@both Er and right yah you guys want use AHCI abilities of a sata controller and with intel chipsets their sata controllers will do that in either straight AHCI or raid mode so meh its easiest to just blanket recommend people kick them over to raid. But yah that's the principles with raid is you have to actively go into the raid configurator and build a specific kind of raid with specific disks, it not one of those passive things that just kind of groups drives. Its also again really too bad the HDD makers are still crying about that flooding when it comes to prices, right before that flooding I picked up those 4 1TB black drives for I think 70$ a piece for instance, if those conditions were the same I'd be praising the virtues of going out and getting some raids going yourselves, but not when even a shoddy 1TB green drive is commanding close to 100$ price tag.

@Bump

Yea those prices are a joke now. I paid about ￡60 for my WD black 1tb drive in the summer, and they're now selling for like twice that price.

I will try switching to ahci and post a quick bench.

I just installed Intel Rapid Storage and I still can't see any info about my actual HDD. Is this normal under my conditions for does it look like something is wrong? It says that my system is functioning normally but the only drive that I see is the DVD. I'm going to try entering the Matrix via Ctrl+I again to see if I can get to the screens that are displayed in the motherboard manual.

Do you perhaps have your internal HDD plugged into the mavell controller instead? Its not really that important though, just ensure that its setup to display errors if it finds any since that's the smart component that will try to warn you if a drive is starting to misbehave that's all. Just so that in the unlikely event of a drive about to die you'll know well ahead of time and can prepare for it.

I only have two places that I can plug it into with the 6 GB cable (I have six 3 GB internal ports and two 6 GB). Since the system wouldn't boot earlier when I disabled the Marvell controller AND the HDD was specifically added to the Device Manger when I updated the Marvell drivers I'm thinking that as long as I want it plugged in via the 6 GB cable I'll have to use the Marvell settings, which only allows for IDE or AHCI Mode. So I guess I'm going to try setting the SATA and the Marvell to AHCI to see what happens.

Just looked it up and confirmed, yah the Intel controller on the P7P55D-E Pro is 6x3.0GB sata2 ports, no native sata3 ports. Now I would encourage you to use the Intel controller with that HDD even though its sata2 instead of sata3, since again with that HDD the bandwidth of sata3 is just not present and not needed. You may as well keep the marvell controller's two ports open so that if/when you buy some fast as greased lightning SSD drive(s) you'll have the ports open that they'll need to unleash thier god-like abilities. Plus yah you really do want the matrix's smart mode watching that 1TB system drive, just kind of an insurance thing that's all.

First off...

Don't use the marvell SATA controller.. it's a poorer performer than the intel sata controller... i'd recommend getting off that marvell controller ASAP as that controller only runs on a single 1x PCI-ex lane which is terrible even for a single Standard Hardrive... obviously running in IDE mode isn't bad.. but they are mostly there for hot swap external hardrive solutions or just stop gaps. Actually in the case of filling all the ports on the main intel sata controller with hardrives.. it's specifically handy for plugging in a dvd/cd rom drive when you've ran out.

Otherwise disable it...

Move the Hardrive onto the primary port of the intel controller and disable the marvell..... and then try and get everything situated to either ahci or raid.

you'll have the best performance and capability that way.

As for installing games outside of the C Drive.. this hasn't been a problem for nearly 15 years... For example when you first install steam..... go through the custom setup options and direct the installation to D:\Steam and it'll install steam to that folder and all the games that are part of steam will be installed where they should be inside the steam folders as usual.

Other games just select custom install and direct it to it's own folder on the other partition to.

Even REALLY really cheap terrible games that people tend to pull out of the bargain bin or cereal boxes don't have problems with this. I know SOME very very old dos games occasionally had stupid directory structure issues.. but otherwise.... works just fine. Patches install just fine... etc.. and so forth... like i said.. i haven't heard or seen a game having issues due to where it was installed to... the parts that need to be placed on the C drive will still be placed there... for example skyrim will still place the configuration and save files in the documents folder.... even if you move the documents folder around to different locations or different drives/partitions... it'll still know where to fetch it.



Back to the whole raid thing...

As i suggested.. the IDE/AHCI/RAID fuctionality is simply a settings.... i suggested raid as it ensures everything is running at it's peak capabilities.

I didn't suggest that you technically setup a raid array with it, you don't need to, although if you wanted to.. having it setup already would save you a little grief in the long run.

ignore the following aside from just giving you a little crash course as was previously somewhat stated in this thread regarding the raid array system itself IF you decide to raid drives together

Regarding your performance loss.... I'm betting that's likely due to using the Intel Matrix Storage software rather than the software i posted a link to which is the newest Rapid Storage Controller Software.

You did install the inf update prior to that as well right?

Using synthetic benchmarks isn't my idea of a great way to really benchmark.. and i know there really much beyond that to really know for certain.. but i do know for a fact that with intels controller being used, IDE is significantly slower than ahci and raid....

also don't forget that with NCQ being enabled and working, that random multiple accesses will be significantly reduced in time.

and your right, you shouldn't be able to access the CTRL+I menu of the intel raid system if you only have 1 hardrive installed.

However intels support for RAID mode with a single drive or multiple hardrives and SATA CD/DVD/BR-rom/rw drives has been supported for several years with full performance and no issues. If there is a problem, it's likely due to the optical drive..... not the controllers fault.


I give a short run down again just to clarify how i would setup:

Ensure the latest bios has been updated

Set optimal settings

Disable all sata controller excluding the intel one

Set intel sata to RAID

Ensure that the Hardrive is in sata port 0 (the first port should be SATA II 3gbps using a SATA II 3gbps cable) and that the optical drive is sata port 5 (the last one using sata II with a SATA II cable)

Boot from windows disk to install windows OR boot into existing windows IF you've already prepared it for being able to boot from the changed setting.

Emediately install the Intel INF Update utility from intels website for best results

Reboot

Install the latest Rapid Storage Controller Software/driver from intels website for best results

reboot (may require 2x reboots)

Install the other device drivers respectifully and proceed with latest updates.

And don't disable the intel rapid storage startup service or startup process... they have other benefits including reporting smart issues directly to windows which can inform you of an impending issue with the drive.. or other drives. (it uses absalutely nothing for startup time or resources... it's got a delayed start of about 1-5 minutes to ensure it's not slowing you down which is also nice)

oh and just to say.. i started making this post about an hour and half ago before some of these other posts.... i was interupted (at work)..

Your board only has SATA II ports for the intel setup.. HOWEVER this doesn't mean they are slower than the SATA III marvel controller.. trust me... plug it into the intel port... it'll work better even if the synthetic benchmarks say "it's 12mb/s slower".....

^^ Dude, paragraphs. Come on. I'm not even going to try and read that. You made some good points in your last one but come on, that's ridiculous.

ED: Okay I just tried and yah there's a paragraph or two but seriously, double spacing everything? Does it need to be graded or something?

You just pinpointed one of my areas of confusion...the term "native" in reference to ports. I've been reading that all night thinking that it meant already installed on the board as opposed to needing an expansion card or such. Here it turns out that native means more like 3rd party in a sense where the controller is on the board but it's not Intel P55 based. Or something like that. Either way, I believe that I understand what you're saying and I was just thinking to myself that maybe SATA3 wasn't the way to go.

BTW, my experiments didn't work unless you consider BSOD a success so here's what I'm thinking...

• Switch out the 6gb for the 3gb cable in order to get the HDD onto the native Intel SATA controller.
  
• Configure SATA as RAID in BIOS (leaving the Marvell Controller alone and in IDE Mode for now) I'm also not going to bother updating the 91xx or the 61xx Marvell drivers.
  
• Re-Install Windows
  
• Update Windows
  
• Update Intel Chipset (INF)
  
• Install Intel Rapid Storage (I believe that I can skip Matrix since Rapid automatically uninstalled it during setup)
  
• Install Renesas USB 3.0 Host Controller
  
• Install Graphic Driver
  
• Install Crystal Disk Mark, Crystal Disk Info, and HD Tune Pro
  
• Benchmark
  
• Sleep (I might do this first actually)

My CDMark test just finished on my secondary system and its 3 GB/s IDE HDD came in at about 105 vs 118 from my 6 GB/s RAID HDD vs 134 when it was just IDE. Not really sure what to make of all that. I'm exhausted.

The board has two seperate Sata controllers, 2x6.0GB Marvel Controller and a 6x3.0GB Intel Controller and they're completely independent from one another, makes sense now? So yah plug the 1TB drive into one of the ports for the Intel controller, make sure that the Intel controller's sata ports are all setup in raid mode (just cause) and install the OS etc accordingly. For sure, good times that'll do this proper.

ED: Actually the bloody board has three HDD controllers, theres's a jMicron one too, jumpin' jesus Either way ignore that one it does that eSata port on the back and the older IDE port and its unlikely you'll be using either.