Stork's Zorro Build: Z68X-UD3H - i7-2600K - HD3000

[EddyMac]

I bought the PCI SATA card I mentioned in the post above but had strange results. I first hooked it up to a spare SSD I had. Boot time wasn't affected, but when I got to the Mavericks desktop I immediately got a message from HWMonitor saying the SSD was overheated. In System Profiler it did show that the drive was connected at 6 gbps.

Later in the day, I disconnected the SSD from the card, and instead hooked up a WD 4TB drive. The results were disappointing. It increased the boot time by several minutes. And when I finally did get through to the Mavericks desktop, System Profiler reported that it was connected at 6 gbps.

The extended boot time with the 4TB HD plugged in was unbearable.

Any ideas what could cause this difference between the SSD and the HDD?

 

[Stork]

I bought the PCI SATA card I mentioned in the post above but had strange results. I first hooked it up to a spare SSD I had. Boot time wasn't affected, but when I got to the Mavericks desktop I immediately got a message from HWMonitor saying the SSD was overheated...

HWMonitor doesn't have a means to check the heat, I guess, on a PCIe SATA connection; it probably gets it's information from the motherboard SATA chipset.

...Later in the day, I disconnected the SSD from the card, and instead hooked up a WD 4TB drive. The results were disappointing. It increased the boot time by several minutes. And when I finally did get through to the Mavericks desktop, System Profiler reported that it was connected at 6 gbps.

The extended boot time with the 4TB HD plugged in was unbearable.

Any ideas what could cause this difference between the SSD and the HDD?

Well, a SSD is faster (read/write) than a HDD connected to same type of SATA connector. I've been using SSDs long enough that I can't remember what it's like to boot from a HDD. I think you can live with the slower boot speed if the access to the 4TB drive connected to the SATA PCIe card is not hateful and it's not your primary boot drive.

One last thing, what is the speed of the PCI slot the card in? That might make a difference. Looking at pages 7/8 in the Z68X-UD3H manual, I notice that the PCIe 1-3 slots also share the buss with the USB. If you put the card in the PCI x8 slot, it will cause your PCI x16 slot to downgrade to a PCI x8 speed; but, if you're only using a GT 640, you might not notice the difference in graphics operations with the SATA card in the PCI x8 slot. If that's not giving you better boot speed, try put the card in one of the last two PCI slots.

 

[EddyMac]

The card is in PCI slot labeled PCIEX1_3, which is PCI Express 2.0 according to the Gigabyte manual. Not sure what that speed is supposed to be but when he SSD was connected, System Profiler said it was connected at 6 gbps.

I'm wondering if the 4TB is a problem so I'm now trying it with a 1 TB WD drive. I'll post the results here.

 

[Stork]

I can't remember...is the WD 4TB HDD a "Green" model? If so, that could be why it's so slow to boot from.

 

[EddyMac]

No, it's a "Black" model.

Regardless, that IS the problem...it doesn't like my 4 TB drive. I have it hooked up to the 1 TB now and everything is working great. Boot time is increased by about 5 seconds...so I can definitely live with that LOL.

Now to install Linux Mint...

 

[EddyMac]

OK I have now installed Linux Mint and everything seems to be working great. I'm posting this from Firefox under Linux Mint. Pretty cool.

 

[Stork]

Cool is cool! Oh! Let us return to those days of yesteryear.

Check the PCIe SATA card's manufacturer's site to see if there are any restrictions or limits of drive size for the card and for a firmware update. 4TB HDDs are fairly new to some SATA products.

 

[EddyMac]

Stork, have you updated to 10.9.5 yet?

 

[Stork]

No. I'm traveling and won't get to it until a week or so. But, it should be a no-brainer.

 

[EddyMac]

Do you have plans to install Yosemite on this build, Stork?