DZ68BC Motherboard Configuration

Yes, that's the idea of the feature...

You can read section 1.6.2 of the board's Technical Product Specification (TPS) for more information regarding its SATA/RAID architecture. Here's the pertinent information:

• RST supports only the headers managed directly by the PCH (the chipset). This includes the 2 dark blue Gen3 (6Gb) and the 4 black Gen2 (3Gb) SATA ports. Using RST, you can create a RAID array that utilizes any/all of these 6 SATA ports.
  

• The other two (light blue) Gen3 ports are managed by a separate Marvell controller. As well, a second Marvell controller is used to manage the eSATA port on the back panel. None of these ports can be used for RAID.
  

• If your intent is to use all or part of the SSD as a performance cache for the RAID array, then the SSD needs to be connected to one of the RST-managed (dark blue or black) SATA ports. I am not sure which will garner the best performance (there are arguments to be made for both possibilities; I leave this to the true SATA/RAID experts to answer); you either have the HDDs on the Gen3 ports and the SSD on a Gen2 port or you have the SSD on a Gen3 port and the HDDs on Gen2 ports.
  

• If your intent is to use the SSD exclusively as a boot/system device, on the other hand, then you could connect it to one of the light blue, Marvell-managed Gen3 SATA ports. This would leave the two dark blue Gen3 ports for your HDDs...
  

...Scott

Hi Hal--

You might be interested in an issue I've run into between my DZ68BC motherboard and a new Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 3TB hard drive.  This drive is supposed to be SATA 3 (6 Gb/s), but only shows in the bios as a 3 Gb/s drive, even when connected to one of the Z68's SATA 3 ports.  More details can be found in my post at the Seagate support forum:

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-Barracuda/ST3000DM001-not-recognized-as-SATA-3-drive/td-p/133208

While I'd love to know if this "handshake" problem is on the motherboard side or hard drive side, it probably doesn't make too much practical difference: even running at 3 Gb/s, this drive benchmarks at over 200 MB/s read/write speed, which is about as good as it gets for a single mechanical hard drive.

Good luck with your build,

Ron

A couple of further comments:

• The Marvell controller should be capable of use in RAID mode.  I have not tried it on the DZ68BC myself, but there is a BIOS setting to select mode on that controller.
  
• From what I understand, the performance of the Intel controller is far superior to that of the Marvell.
  
• I am running two Seagate 3TB ST33000651AS in RAID 1 on the light blue (Intel 6.0 GB) ports and an SSD (which is my boot disk) on the Marvell dark blue port.  My drives all show up at the proper speeds.
  

Good luck with your build...

Rick

I hope you have your colors backwards; the TPS indicates light blue is Marvell and (dark) blue is Intel (PCH). As for RAID support, while the TPS indicates that RAID functionality is only supported on the Intel headers (see section 1.6.2.1), one of the BIOS engineers verified that RAID is indeed a choice in BIOS Setup..

Aye - I did switch the colors.....  I have an Asus board also that does use dark blue for the Marvell controller.

Anyway on my DZ68BC its the Marvell for the SSD and the PCH for the RAID 1.

I wish we could see more ports on the PCH and eliminate the Marvell completely.