Hi,

I have resolved my problem by NOT using the Navy Blue Marvel 6Gb's ports as they DO NOT support anything plugged in to them during boot, and they DO NOT support any Raid configuration (contrary to unpopular belief).
I have established this through testing and research. To put it more technically, the navy blue Marvell SATA 6GB’s ports with Marvell 88SE9128 chipset adapter ARE CRAP. They are only suitable for connecting a drive that is not required during boot. I did manage to connect two Seagate drives in Raid 5 mode but after a couple of days the raid configuration failed.
The bottom line is any motherboard using the Marvell SATA 6GB’s ports with 88SE9128 chipset is going to have the same issues with these ports.
I have used the two Grey Intel 6Gb's ports for my Intel SSD's loaded with Win7 OS (no problems).
I have connected a 4 port raid card to the MB to take care of the  600 WD VelociRaptor’s and other drives.
I have attached (below) some correspondence I had about the above issue.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=685152

Search: How to set up Windows 7 in a raid 1 configuration with 2 ssd drives.

Search: Marvell SATA 6GB’s ports with Marvell 88SE9128 chipset

From: Stacey Shen [mailto:tsd@asus.com.tw]
Sent: 31 August 2011 08:30
Subject: Re:Re:Re:<TSD> Motherboard P8P67 DELUXE

Hi Stacey,
I have established that the Marvell ports do not support OS, however I connected two Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5 SATA drives to the Marvell ports
and set up Raid 1 correctly using the Ctrl/M at boot.
I am now a world expert at setting up Raid on the Marvell ports. But now even the Seagate Barracudas (these actualy have a Marvel chipset) I previously set up in Raid1 keep screwing up.
As long as there are NO folders or files placed on the drive I can go to the Windows Marvell Tray and all is perfect. I can reboot do a Ctrl/M and look at the setup and then look at the BIOS (EZ Backup) and all is fine. I can do that as long as I want... BUT

AS SOON as I place files or Folders on the Raid drive it all falls apart. The Windows Marvell Tray shows that a drive has dropped out, the files/folders I put on the disk disappear, when I reboot the PC wants to do a CHKDSK.
All Marvell drivers are set up correctly.
Everybody that has replied to my enquires has told me to forget them!
Everything I set up in Raid on these Marvel ports falls apart once data files are put on them. How do you KNOW that these pots actually work in Raid mode?
Should ASUS be contacting Marvel to sort out this problem?
Regards,

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you for contacting ASUS Customer Service.
There is no utility to see "these ports actually work in Raid mode".
I still cannot understand completely.
Do you use OS on the Marvell ports?

Best Regards,
Stacey
ASUS Customer Service

Greetings from Adaptec Technical Support!
Thank you for your message to Adaptec support.

The Asus P8P67 Deluxe uses the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). UEFI defines a standard interface between the operating system, platform firmware, and external devices.
Like BIOS before it, UEFI is responsible for initializing system hardware (such as processors, memory, and PCI buses), initializing boot devices, and handing off to an operating system boot loader.
UEFI can run on top of or instead of traditional BIOS implementations.
The UEFI boot process is different from BIOS booting. In systems and motherboards that are designed to strictly support UEFI capabilities and features, legacy BIOS-compliant Adaptec adapters cannot be used.
Only adapters with an UEFI-compliant firmware will initialize and install correctly in a strict UEFI system.

Adaptec controllers are currently not UEFI-compliant.
Adaptec products cannot be used in motherboards or systems that are designed to support UEFI booting only, these systems won't boot at all with an Adaptec product installed;
UEFI systems and motherboards that support both, UEFI booting and BIOS booting, will still work with Adaptec controllers.
Please see the documentation of the system or motherboard on how to disable UEFI boot or enable the use of non-UEFI-compliant adapters.

If the system is capable of using non UEFI controllers:
I recommend the Adaptec 6405 or 6805 (depending on how many drives will be directly connected to the controller), the 6405 will connect to four direct attached drives and the 6805 will connect to 8 direct connected drives.
For systems that use a SAS backplane with an SFF-8087 connector, both of the 6 series controllers will support up to 256 SATA or SAS devices using the SAS expanders in the backplane or enclosure.
The 6405 and the 6805 also have a Gen 2 PCIe 8 lane interface to the motherboard, and a 6 Gb/sec interface to the disk drives, making them some of the most advanced RAID controllers Adaptec has produced.

Booting a Windows OS (or almost any OS) from the RAID controller can be accomplished with a smaller array for the OS; Adaptec controllers can create multiple arrays on each "set" of drives, much like the way partitioning functions on a single hard drive.

Thank you for using Adaptec's ASK US Support Service.

Dear parsec,

As another observed you indeed seem to be the fountainhead of knowledge on RAID controllers, and I thank you for all your effort helping others (and hence my education). I have a little different puzzle with which you may be able to help. I am planning a build with my youngster using a Z68/1155 board and an i7-2600K processor .I've looked at MSI, Gigabyte, ASRock, and Intel boards- notably the DZ68BC; and I've also considered 'backing up' to a P67board if it solved the discribed RAID-controller issues below.

I like to set-up two, 2-drive, SATA III-6GPS RAID 1 arrays, using an Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) controller, but all I seem to be able to find on any Z68 board is support for just a single 6Gps, two-drive array, using the Intel controller. Bewildering as it is, most vendors/boards offer the Marvell controller (or something else) to build an additional 6Gps array. This has never been attractive to me (digression on Marvell controllers omitted). Of course, on the Intel DZ68BC board, there are four 3-GPS SATA II headers where SATA II RAID arrays can be created using an Intel controller. I could go ahead and build one 6-GPS array and one 3-GPS array, but that doesn't get me where I'd like to be...

What I wanted to do is set-up one 6-Gps RAID 1 array using a pair of 120(+)GB SSDs, and another using high capacity HDDs. I'd load the OS and apps onto one partition of the SSD array, and use a partition on HDD array for "data." If you are still with me, I have so far created one partition on each array. Additionally, I'd create a smallish second partition on each array, with the second SSD partition used for Smart Response Technology (SRT) cache. I've never done this, but assume I need a second partition on the HDD array of the same size as the SRT cache on the SSD array, but this supposition could be folly on my part. Questions:

1) Can I even do this? Said otherwise, is the SRT paradigm (one SSD paired with one HDD) extensible to using a pair of RAID 1 array partitions as described?

2) If so, what do you think about trying to do so with a 6-Gps SSD array SRT cache partition and a HDD partition running at 3-GPS? Intuitively this doesn't seem very wise, but if it works without major performance issues it seems acceptable. I'd guess there will always be inherent "sync" delay between an SRT SSD cache and any HDD, hence my supposition that this might work.

3) I may be confused about how SRT actually works; that is, the 'mirror' HDD partition may not be applicable at all - perchance the SSD SRT cache would simply "sync" with a single partition HDD array?

Also, there's no way I'm screwing around with Marvell - I simply have it turned off on my ASUS X58 P6T machine, digression omitted...

4) This is going to be my kid's new machine (8th grade), and I want a "cool" factor (you know how kids are with their friends), as a motivator to start learning what's going on inside the case. At the same time I don't have a lot of spare time to fiddle with problems either. So, big picture, would you advise that I just skip using SRT, and use the DZ67BC's Intel 6-Gps controller for OS and apps on an SSD (RAID 1) array; and then use the Intel 3-Gps controller for a pair of 'data' HDDs (also in RAID 1)? Intuitively, how significant do you think the overall performance degradation would be as a result of mixing the speeds of the two arrays?

Any perspective you wish to share will be enormously appreciated. I've been researching this build for well over 50 hours at this point - and I'm ready to surrender to compromise! :-) Thank you very much - anyone/everyone - for your time and insights. Best regards... Dave Norton (swamphawk)