Sandy Bridge (Cougar Point mobo) on p6780t - which SATA ports? [ Edited ]

[AySz88]

There are 6 SATA "ports" in my HP p6780t, and I understand that only the four ports that are SATA II (Rev 2.0, 3.0 Gbps) are affected by the Cougar Point recall issue.  On the motherboard I see four actual SATA connectors (labeled ports 1 through 4: blue, white, light blue, and orange, respectively) and two empty placeholders (ports 5 and 6).  Does anyone know which of the ports are the SATA III (Rev. 3.0, 6.0 Gbps) ports?

Since I don't plan to use more than two connectors, one for the hard drive and one for the optical drive, I would rather identify the unaffected ports than go through the hassle of returning the computers.

[old_geekster]

AySz, welcome to the forum.

I am not certain about the information that you have provided.  Here are the Motherboard Specifications for the the computer.  All of the specs that I saw only show USB 2.0 ports.  You can review the specs for yourself to see what I mean.

[AySz88]

At that page, under internal connectors, it does list "4x SATA connectors", but it doesn't say which type they are.  The four physical connectors are also labeled in "motherboard layout".

You can also see in the photograph (just to the left of SATA 3 and 4) that there are two outlines where two more SATA connectors could have gone, but the connectors aren't physically installed.

The page also says that it is an Intel H67 chipset, which (from other sources) is indeed supposed to have two SATA III and four SATA II connections.  So it's just a question of which physical connectors are wired to which connections on the chipset.

[old_geekster]

AySz, I appologize.  I don't know where my head was, but for some reason I went from thinking SATA ports to typing USB ports.

You are absolutely correct about what it shows.  However, HP purchases their motherboards from different manufacturers and makes changes to meet their needs.  Therefore, the specs on the motherboard manufacturer's website are not always what HP has included on their boards.  I don't believe that they have SATA 2 in these boards at this point.  I am not certain, but they would normally list them that way.  The same as they do USB 2.0.  You can contact HP Customer Service to see what they have to say.  I suggest using the online option.  This way you wouldn't be getting second hand information.  Please let us know what they say.

[TomTahoe]

I had the same question, and I searched the internet for a utility to check this data on 2-2 and found nothing. E-mail HP tech support 3 times and they could not answer the question. Yesterday, search again, I discovered this utility to run a SATA port check for you:

Explanation:

http://gigabytedaily.blogspot.com/2011/02/gigabyte-6-series-sata-check.html

Download:

http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/utility.aspx?cg=2

This utility worked for me and told me what I wanted to know much faster than tech support, who I am still waiting to get an answer from. Geez guys, come on. You have people in tech support that don't know how to find out basic technical details about products you sell, nor do they know how to route those questions to people that do.

[HeliskiDude]

Which SATA ports were the 6GB ones.  Based on the tech info at HP, the Pegatron motherboard they use (Cleveland) only has 4 SATA ports installed.  Did you determine that two were actually SATA III / 6 Gbps?

[wesleylee99]

Based in this article:

  http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143/the-source-of-intels-cougar-point-sata-bug

The 6Gbs ports are ports 0 and 1, and other 4 ports (2 to 5) are 3Gbs.    The logical thing to do would be to connect SATA0 and SATA1 to the 6Gbs ports (0 and 1) and SATA2 and SATA3 to ports 2 and 3 (3Gbs).

Here's a link to the the motherboard layout.

  http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02668523&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&lc=en&dlc=en...

You can click on "Motherboard Layout" to see the outline of the SATA ports.

I'm going to try the utility that the other pollster provided.  I'm also going to open my box and see how things are connected and check if  the picture matches my actual motherboard.

[AySz88 · Accepted solution]

For clarity, I'm going to use the physical labels that are on the motherboard.  (The physical labels are off by one from how they are numbered in software and on schematics.)

According to the utility from Gigabyte and the schematics, the two good SATA III ports are the ones that are physically labeled "SATA 1" and "SATA 2" - these are the two ports facing to the side toward the hard drives, and are colored dark blue and beige/white respectively.  Out of the box, all you need to do is to move the DVD drive's connection from the "SATA 3" (light blue) port to the "SATA 2" (beige/white) port.   The cable gets a bit taut but there's just enough length for it.

[ledoc254]

Hello,

I am a brand new owner of a p6780 desktop and I am a little confused by this thread. I followed the HP website links for my model; to the motherboard layout you posted earlier and I see some other diferences from the Sandy Bridge (Cougar Point mobo) you seem to be describing. most notably the pci slots on "my" mobo  are all the tiny little  pci exp x1 slots  except for the graphics card slot which of course is x16. I think the p6780t mobo is just an OEM analagous construct and not identical to the 6 SATA port mobo you are talking about and which looks different from the mobo picture in the article about the Cougar Point SATA bug. Of course I would love to discover my SATA ports had 6gb speed but I dont think that will be the case.  I literally just got the desktop so tonight when I open it up to put in extra RAM, a Radeon 6570 graphics card and a pci exp wireless adaptor I will take a good look around and see what is under the hood.

[ledoc254]

I was happy to see that when I ran the SATA port analyzer utility that was posted on this thread that  of the four SATA ports on my Cleveland mobo  SATA Ports 1 and 2 (actualy 0 and 1 by the Sandy Bridge layout)ARE actually 6 Gbs ports! I already knew that my p6780t was built after the recall so would not have the recall problem. Maybe now I will upgrade my windows 7 experience rating by switching in a 6Gbs hard drive and  connecting it to the appropriate SATA port. Hope the 6Gbs port doesnt have to be turned on to the higher data flow rate by some change in the BIOS but I guess I will find that out soon enough.