i have a dfi lanparty nf4 sli-dr motherboard with a total of 8 ports. are all sata ports the same? i was thinking that the sata ports 1-4 supports sata 1 and sata 2 and the sata ports 5-8 supports sata 1 only correct me if im wrong. i have read my manual and it says that the sata ports 1-4 is supported by the nforce4 chip and the sata ports 5-8 is supported by the silicon image sil 3114 chip (for dr models only). so am i dealing with 2 types of sata ports here? i want to buy a sata hard drive soon, so would i be able to just choose any sata port and windows will pick it up or do i have to choose a certain sata port?

I'm pretty sure you could pick any port and It would work fine. The reason there are two different chips running your SATA ports is because the system chipset can only support 4 SATA channels. In order to support more than 4 SATA ports the motherboard manufacturer has added another SATA controller by Silicon Image. My motherboard has the same setup as yours with the SATA ports and I have had no issues. Mattwizz3

Hi chaps just to add , check your mobo manual the silicon image controller is 'slower' using the sata1 spec vs the other which uses the sata2 spec , erm nothing your going to really notice if your only using one sata device shove it on the 1st ports. somthing i discovered a while ago wondering why my mobo had different coloured sata ports and different drivers. just for info really ot btw nice blue colour like firefox.