J4205 best storage setup?

Hi, i'm looking for some guidance on my storage setup, i'm not sure what the optimal setup should be and what slots to ideally utilise?

Edited by Anquetil - 24 Sep 2017 at 10:53am

Anquetil wrote: Hi, i'm looking for some guidance on my storage setup, i'm not sure what the optimal setup should be and what slots to ideally utilise? Purpose is a Windows 10 HTPC, for recording multiple live TV channnels and playback.  It also doubles as a family storage server where super speed is NOT a big requirement, this task will sit mainly dormant. I have a: PCIe 2.0 Card, 2 port, that supports SATAIII 6Gbps/RAID 0-1 And the mobo obviously has 4 x  SATAIII 6.0 Gbps connectors. The disks: 1 x 128GB SSD  - Windows 10 2 x 1TB 7200 SATAIII- For recording (faster speeds tests than below) 2 x 2TB 7200 SATAIII Green - For family storage Would this be an optimal setup? 1 x 128GB SSD  - Windows 10 - Mobo connector 2 x 1TB 7200 SATAIII- For recording - PCIe 2.0 Card in Raid 0 (no redunancy required) 2 x 2TB 7200 SATAIII Green  - For family storage - Mobo connector, Windows storage spaces mirrored

First, your board has only two Intel SATA III ports. The other two SATA III ports are provided by the add on ASMedia SATA chipset. From your board's specs:

2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors, support NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug
2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by ASMedia ASM1061, support NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug

The Intel SATA III ports are superior in speed to the ASMedia SATA III ports. For use with SSDs, the Intel SATA III ports are the only choice.

Next "SATA III" HDDs are simply marketing talk. Not one HDD in existence is capable of saturating SATA II speeds. So called SATA III HDDs are only possibly SATA III into the drive's DRAM buffer chip, that is 8 - 16MB? That's how they get away with being called SATA III. Data is still written and read from the HDD at its sub-SATA II speeds. Plus there is no comparison between any decent SSD and a "SATA III" HDD regarding speed. The much greater latency of HDDs compared to SSDs is one of the main reasons they are so much slower than SSDs.

Using a single HDD on the ASMedia SATA ports will not result in any performance loss, since even at its lower performance compared to the Intel SATA ports, it is still beyond what any HDD is capable of providing in performance.

Your PCIe 2.0 SATA/RAID card, no idea what model. What PCIe 2.0 interface does it require? PCIe 2.0 x1 or x2, or what?

The PCIe 2.0 slot on your board is a PCIe 2.0 x1 slot, so one PCIe 2.0 lane shared with all the drives connected to it. If your SATA RAID card needs more lanes than that, it will either operate at a lower performance level, or possibly not at all.

Your optimal setup is fine, but it might be better to have one of the Green HDDs on the Intel SATA III ports, and the other on the ASMedia SATA ports, although when mirrored in Storage Spaces, it likely won't make any difference.