Room For More SATA Ports?

[Guest]

Hi, my motherboard only has space for six SATA ports on it, what can I do to get more? 

[EarthboundHero]

You can buy a PCI-E expansion card that supports SATA.

[Guest]

You can buy a PCI-E expansion card that supports SATA.

Anything you would recommend? Everything I'm looking at only seems to have like 2 extra ports, what if I need to expand beyond that?

[imthewalrus]

What are you using so many sata ports for? It's usually a bad idea to have all your drives connected to the same system, if you have another desktop in your house connect some of the drives to that one and set up a small network. If you really really need more sata ports in your computer you can get one of these:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124020&cm_re=sata_pci-_-15-124-020-_-Product

 

 

If you only need space for one, and your hard drive doesn't saturate your USB interface (if it is a hard drive USB 2.0 is fine, for most SSDd you need 3.0) you could get one of these:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812400542&cm_re=usb_sata-_-12-400-542-_-Product

 

 

If you are looking for a major upgrade in terms of storage, look into investing into a NAS box. 

[EarthboundHero]

Here's an 8X one, a bit expensive though http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124070

[EarthboundHero]

Anything you would recommend? Everything I'm looking at only seems to have like 2 extra ports, what if I need to expand beyond that?

And here are a bunch of X4 cards http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007607%20600022724

[Guest]

What are you using so many sata ports for? It's usually a bad idea to have all your drives connected to the same system, if you have another desktop in your house connect some of the drives to that one and set up a small network. If you really really need more sata ports in your computer you can get one of these:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124020&cm_re=sata_pci-_-15-124-020-_-Product

 

 

If you only need space for one, and your hard drive doesn't saturate your USB interface (if it is a hard drive USB 2.0 is fine, for most SSDd you need 3.0) you could get one of these:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812400542&cm_re=usb_sata-_-12-400-542-_-Product

 

 

If you are looking for a major upgrade in terms of storage, look into investing into a NAS box. 

it's for my future rig i'm planning out, it's going to have 3 main operating systems, linux, windows, and hackintosh/mac, each os will run off of 2 SSDs (RAID 0) and then each OS will have a backup/storage drive so a total of 9 drives

[Guest]

Here's an 8X one, a bit expensive though http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124070

that will work thanks, but now i'm curious, for let's say a data center server build that requires tons of drives for storage, how does that work exactly? 

[EarthboundHero]

that will work thanks, but now i'm curious, for let's say a data center server build that requires tons of drives for storage, how does that work exactly? 

I think, they use mobo's with much more SATA/SAS ports.

[imthewalrus]

it's for my future rig i'm planning out, it's going to have 3 main operating systems, linux, windows, and hackintosh/mac, each os will run off of 2 SSDs (RAID 0) and then each OS will have a backup/storage drive so a total of 9 drives

 

I wouldn't suggest you use raid 0 for something like OS X or Windows unless you are doing something really taxing on your storage devices, like video editing. For linux it would be pointless, unless you are setting up a server and the raid is your cache. If you get something like a samsung 850 evo you wouldn't notice the difference in boot up times if it was on raid 0 or not. 

 

But if you are doing that, then I would suggest you spend money on a better motherboard that supports so many storage devices and not on a PCI card which can have compatibility issues with raid. 

[Guest]

I think, they use mobo's with much more SATA/SAS ports.

just looked at a server motherboard that supported dual xeon processors and it only had six SATA ports, im stumped 

[EarthboundHero]

just looked at a server motherboard that supported dual xeon processors and it only had six SATA ports, im stumped 

Haha perfect timing, check out Linus's latest video. http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/360702-100tb-storinator-server/

[Guest]

Haha perfect timing, check out Linus's latest video. http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/360702-100tb-storinator-server/

yeah i just looked back at one of his old videos, apparently it's a BIG like REALLY BIG RAID card so I will defiantly look into this 

[EarthboundHero]

yeah i just looked back at one of his old videos, apparently it's a BIG like REALLY BIG RAID card so I will defiantly look into this 

So, what's your plan? You making a data center?

[Guest]

So, what's your plan? You making a data center?

i wonder if it's possible to split items in a RAID array, like have one RAID and then have that split into sections

[Guest]

Is there anything that can attach directly to a SATA port or something of that matter to make more room, like instead of using a card 

[Captain_WD]

Hi, my motherboard only has space for six SATA ports on it, what can I do to get more? 

 

Hey Yames,

 

An expansion card would be the best solution for this. 

However, if you have enough space on the RAID arrays for the operating applications and need the additional HDDs for backups and occasional storage, you might want to consider a NAS as it is recommended that backups are stored on drives that are not attached to your system. If you don't need fast access times or higher transfer speeds to your HDDs, I would recommend having a NAS instead of 3 more drives in your case.

 

Captain_WD.

[Guest]

 

Hey Yames,

 

An expansion card would be the best solution for this. 

However, if you have enough space on the RAID arrays for the operating applications and need the additional HDDs for backups and occasional storage, you might want to consider a NAS as it is recommended that backups are stored on drives that are not attached to your system. If you don't need fast access times or higher transfer speeds to your HDDs, I would recommend having a NAS instead of 3 more drives in your case.

 

Captain_WD.

 

Can always count on da captain, thanks man - this last 3 non array drives are for kind of like emergencies, rare to use them but will work and most of the time the computer will be hooked up to a private network where most of the data will be going back and forth it's just for when I don't have access to that network 

[Captain_WD]

Can always count on da captain, thanks man - this last 3 non array drives are for kind of like emergencies, rare to use them but will work and most of the time the computer will be hooked up to a private network where most of the data will be going back and forth it's just for when I don't have access to that network 

 

Thanks for the kind words In that case an expansion card might be the better than having a NAS. Remote access to those drive is still an option but it's up to you to figure out how you'd like to have them, if you can put them separately or if they need to go inside the case with an expansion card, and how fast do you want the transfer speeds and access times to be. Good luck with the build and post some results once you are done.

 

Captain_WD.