I was wondering what your approach is to using available SATA ports for your array.

I have six MB SATA ports and eight SATA available via HBA (9211-8i)

Do you recommend populating all available motherboard SATA ports first, then using an HBA for the rest of the array? Is it better to have all of the data disks if possible on the HBA first as a priority?

Do you guys recommend keeping many disks as possible on the same controller? (i.e. populating HBA first)