Intel ICH10R vs Marvell 9123 for desktop RAID 1 with SSDs

Question

I have a desktop with an ASUS motherboard with 6 SATA ports.

• 4x3Gbps ICH10R ports
• 2x6Gbps Marvell 9123 ports

I bought two 3Gbps Intel SSD drives to be used in a RAID 1 configuration (reliability is of primary concern).

My question is whether to connect them to the 6Gbps ports or the 3Gbps ports?

Even though the drives are only 3Gbps, I thought I'd use the Marvell 63Gbps ports. Figured it was newer technology so probably better. But then I read (an old article) that the ICH10R controller can be much faster. So now I'm not sure. How interchangeable are the drives on each controller if something goes bad? What are the other issues? Is one controller more reliable than the other?

Answer 1

The odds are (since I don't know your motherboard's specifics) you can probably disable the Marvell controller in the BIOS, whereas you won't be able to disable the Intel one.

Since using the 6Gbps ports probably won't help any with 3Gbps drives, I'd say use the Intel controller and disable the Marvell one, as you'll probably gain more by having the resources it would use remain available for other subsystems.

I'd be surprised if you could take an array built on one of these controllers and move it to the other and maintain the array, since they are different manufacturers; but you never know as Intel uses Marvell on their boards as a secondary sometimes as well.

Answer 2

If the drives are 3gbps then it doesn't matter if you connect them to the 6gbps Marvell ports, they will only run at 3gbps. Regardless of the ports you use, you won't get better performance than the slowest component.

Since RAID 1 is a mirror, in theory regardless of the port you connect it to it should work. If 1 drive dies, and you connect the remaining drive to a new port, you should be able to access your data regardless.

I would say use the 3gbps ports since that is how fast your drives are; you don't get any benefits of faster ports.