New System Questions

I've got the parts for a new system and had a couple questions before I started blindly throwing parts in.

New board: Z87-Deluxe

SSD: Samsung 840 Pro


I only have a few questions and they should (hopefully) be easy to answer.

1.) First off, my new board has 6 Intel 6Gb/s ports and 4 ASMedia 6Gb/s ports. I assume I want to put the SSD on the Intel ports?

2.) I plan on using the old HDD as a data drive. As I have ample ports, would it make any difference if I put it on the Intel ports?

3.) Speaking of the old HDD. It looks like I have an either/or situation with AHCI. If I use AHCI, will it wipe any info I have on the HDD? (I can backup the HDD, I would just prefer not too.)

4.) I had an issue with my current system where I had the HDD and an ATA optical drive plugged into the SATA controller but it had to be in a certain order. The optical drive had to be plugged into SATA1 and the HDD had to be plugged into SATA3. If reversed, the system wouldn't boot. Is this a common issue and will I encounter it with my new board? If so, how should I connect the SSD, HDD and optical drive?

That's it....for now. lol