GIGABYTE 6 Series SATA Check Application, tool to help optimise SATA port usage on current P67/H67 boards

The news of the SATA 2.0 issues with Intel 6 series chipsets has sparked a lot of uncertainty about how this will affect those of us who upgraded to the new Sandy Bridge architecture. Essentially, if you’re using 1 or 2 SATA devices then this chipset issue need not affect you at all because you can connect your devices to the 2 white SATA 3.0 ports. However, if you’re using 3 or more SATA devices, you may want to prioritise your more important devices on the white SATA 3.0 ports (e.g. hard drive with your operating system on it) and the less important devices on the Intel PCH SATA 2.0 ports (e.g. a DVD ROM).

To help our customers optimise SATA performance on their 6 series mobos, GIGABYTE has created an easy to use utility called the GIGABYTE 6 Series SATA Check that tells you if the SATA ports that you are using are in fact the affected Intel PCH SATA 2.0 ports. It also recommends that you change your SATA devices to the white SATA 3.0 ports. The utility is a simple program that will work on any 6 series chipset based mobo, and has 3 possible scenarios that offer advice for users to configure their SATA devices. To operate, simply copy this utility to your P67/H67 system’s Windows desktop and unzip, then double click the “67sfck.exe” file.

The 1st scenario is where there are no devices connected to the affected Intel PCH SATA 2.0 ports, and the utility will let you know that your SATA configuration is OK.

The 2nd scenario is where your devices are all connected to the affected Intel PCH SATA 2.0 ports, and the utility will advise you to (Please) move 1 or 2 devices from Intel PCH SATA 2.0 ports to the free SATA 3.0 ports.

The 3rd scenario is where you have devices connected to the affected Intel PCH SATA 2.0 ports and the SATA 3.0 ports are also populated. Here the utility will advice you that the “Use of (the) Intel PCH SATA 2.0 ports is not recommended.”

The GIGABYTE 6 Series SATA Check utility is available for download on the official GIGABYTE website.

08 Feb, 2011 Update - Here's the end user online alert from Intel: “Alert for Intel® 6 Series Express Chipsets and Intel® Xeon® C200 Chipsets users” which release by Intel, Jan 31^st, 2011. http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-032263.htm.