Difference between SATA and Gigabyte SATA2

[eli2k]

Hey - what is the difference between these two types of ports? Does it matter which one I plug hard drives into? The manual did not indicate what was different for each.

Thanks,
- Eli

[godto]

Re: Difference between SATA and Gigabyte SATA2

all ways plug your hard drive to yellow port .. and start with 0 for main drive (operate system)
the giga sata is purple ... and that just like yellow ... but operate under different controller .. because i believe 1 controller only able to handle 6 sata ...

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Difference between SATA and Gigabyte SATA2

The purple ports are for the Gigabyte/J.Micron controller and depending on your board you may be able to use them for a extra RAID array or any other SATA Device.

The Yellow ports are the Intel Controller, which controls all the Yellow or Orange ports and can do Various RAID's if your board has the ICHxR chip on it.

Both will need seperate drivers loaded and both as said above have different BIOS settings.

The Yellow/Intel Controller's BIOS settings are the ones at the top of the Integrated Peripherals Page of the BIOS

The Purple/Gigabyte-J.Micron Controller's BIOS settings are the ones In the middle of the Integrated Peripherals Page of the BIOS

[eli2k]

Re: Difference between SATA and Gigabyte SATA2

Thanks. So, if I don't need those purple ports, I can just disable them then? Oh, well, I'll just stick with the yellow ports. :P

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: Difference between SATA and Gigabyte SATA2

Yes, if you want you may disable them.

[mv2devnull]

Re: Difference between SATA and Gigabyte SATA2

One does not disable ports. It is the controller chip that you probably disable. And it depends on the version of motherboard and its BIOS, what you can disable (at all).

For example: GA-EP45-DQ6, BIOS F11. One cannot "disable" the Silicon Image 5723 chips. One can disable the JMicron 363, aka Gigabyte SATA2. Disabling that affects the four SATA ports on the two 5723 chips, and the PATA IDE channel too.