How to increase sata ports

[Divyank]

I have asus z97-k motherboard, it has 6 sata ports and i am using all ports and now i want to add more internal hard drives so I want to know that there is any possibility to increase sata ports by any expansion card or by something else? Please help me this will be very helpful.

[imreloadin]

3 minutes ago, Divyank said:

I have asus z97-k motherboard, it has 6 sata ports and i am using all ports and now i want to add more internal hard drives so I want to know that there is any possibility to increase sata ports by any expansion card or by something else? Please help me this will be very helpful.

Here is the Newegg link to PCI-E SATA Controllers:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607&IsNodeId=1

 

Just select the number of SATA ports you want on it and go from there.

[GDRRiley]

grab a HBA card

[Jwalbrecht2000]

Wouldn't it be better to offload your old hard drives' files onto one or two bigger hard drives? It would save you a PCIe slot and would probably also save you some grief in the future when you run out of ports again.

[mariushm]

Your motherboard has an x16 slot for the video card, a second x16 pci-express slot that's electrically only x4  and two x1 slots.

 

You can plug an x4 card or an x8 card into an x16 slot without problems, the slots are designed that way.

 

You're looking for SATA controller cards on PCI Express slots. You can buy one that uses any kind of pci express slot (x4 , x8 or x16) because it will fit in your second x16 slot but since that slot is electrically only x4 (has only enough signal wires inside the slot to transfer data at x4 speeds) you shouldn't focus on a specific controller just because it says it uses a pci-express x16 connector. In fact, you should actually aim for one that uses x4 or x8 because it's more likely to be more compatible with the limitation of the second slot.

 

SATA controllers can be found here, plenty of them (i tried to filter out the cards running on pci-e x1 because they usually offer only 2 sata connectors and they're not worth occupying a slot for just 2 sata ports but some of them still got through)  :  http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607 8000 600022730 600022733 600022734 600244153 600325898 600362375 600362376 600362381 600417234 600456436 600022671 600022673&IsNodeId=1&ActiveSearchResult=True

 

You can also go for SATA controller cards with SAS connectors (most of them have mini-SAS or otherwise known as SFF-8087 ) , you need special cables with those, basically a SAS connector has the signal wires for up to 4 SATA connectors, so you can buy  SAS -> 4 x SATA cable. Here's a list of such SATA controllers : http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607 8000 600022730 600022733 600022734 600244153 600325898 600362375 600362376 600362381 600417234 600456436 600022672 4814&IsNodeId=1&ActiveSearchResult=True

 

Here's an example of mini-SAS to 4x SATA cable : https://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-Internal-Mini-SAS-SFF8087-Int-MS-1M4S/dp/B001L9DU88

 

But like the above guy said, maybe you're better off buying a high capacity drive (3-4 TB) to replace a couple of your older lower capacity drives.

[Divyank]

On 8/20/2016 at 5:20 AM, mariushm said:

Your motherboard has an x16 slot for the video card, a second x16 pci-express slot that's electrically only x4  and two x1 slots.

 

You can plug an x4 card or an x8 card into an x16 slot without problems, the slots are designed that way.

 

You're looking for SATA controller cards on PCI Express slots. You can buy one that uses any kind of pci express slot (x4 , x8 or x16) because it will fit in your second x16 slot but since that slot is electrically only x4 (has only enough signal wires inside the slot to transfer data at x4 speeds) you shouldn't focus on a specific controller just because it says it uses a pci-express x16 connector. In fact, you should actually aim for one that uses x4 or x8 because it's more likely to be more compatible with the limitation of the second slot.

 

SATA controllers can be found here, plenty of them (i tried to filter out the cards running on pci-e x1 because they usually offer only 2 sata connectors and they're not worth occupying a slot for just 2 sata ports but some of them still got through)  :  http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607 8000 600022730 600022733 600022734 600244153 600325898 600362375 600362376 600362381 600417234 600456436 600022671 600022673&IsNodeId=1&ActiveSearchResult=True

 

You can also go for SATA controller cards with SAS connectors (most of them have mini-SAS or otherwise known as SFF-8087 ) , you need special cables with those, basically a SAS connector has the signal wires for up to 4 SATA connectors, so you can buy  SAS -> 4 x SATA cable. Here's a list of such SATA controllers : http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607 8000 600022730 600022733 600022734 600244153 600325898 600362375 600362376 600362381 600417234 600456436 600022672 4814&IsNodeId=1&ActiveSearchResult=True

 

Here's an example of mini-SAS to 4x SATA cable : https://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-Internal-Mini-SAS-SFF8087-Int-MS-1M4S/dp/B001L9DU88

 

But like the above guy said, maybe you're better off buying a high capacity drive (3-4 TB) to replace a couple of your older lower capacity drives.

 

[Divyank]

On 8/20/2016 at 4:50 AM, imreloadin said:

Here is the Newegg link to PCI-E SATA Controllers:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007607&IsNodeId=1

 

Just select the number of SATA ports you want on it and go from there.

As I can see on this link they are raid cards so if I use raid card but i do not want to use my drives in raid so is it possible?

[Divyank]

On 8/20/2016 at 4:58 AM, Jwalbrecht2000 said:

Wouldn't it be better to offload your old hard drives' files onto one or two bigger hard drives? It would save you a PCIe slot and would probably also save you some grief in the future when you run out of ports again.

I already have 2- 2 TB and 2- 3TB drives so thats why i need more sata ports

[mariushm]

Yes, the majority of these (if not all) will allow you to use the hard drives connected to them as either stand alone or in a raid mode.

[imreloadin]

50 minutes ago, Divyank said:

As I can see on this link they are raid cards so if I use raid card but i do not want to use my drives in raid so is it possible?

Yeah normally with those RAID is an option but you can also run them as just controllers.

[Divyank]

Thank you guys

[Mark77]

More ports, or port multipliers. 

[Divyank]

On 8/30/2016 at 6:26 AM, Mark77 said:

More ports, or port multipliers. 

I did not understand it what is the difference between them

[mariushm]

A port multiplier is like a network switch, it takes one sata port and creates 5 out of them. The connection to the PC is limited by that one sata port.

It's like a network switch, the original sata cable that starts from the motherboard or original sata controller and goes into the port multiplier card is like the WAN port of your switch/router. The five ports created by the port multiplier have the 3gbps or 6gbps bandwidth to the port multiplier chip, but from there all the communication is done through that single sata cable back to the motherboard or sata controller.

 

For example if you're transferring data from two SSD drives at the same time and each SSD is capable of reaching up to 450-500 MB/s , the maximum speed is restricted by the 500 MB/s maximum speed of the original sata cable, so in the end you'll copy data with about 200-250 MB/s from each SSD.

 

In contrast, a sata controller is usually connected to the computer through a PCI Express slot, where each x1 is capable of 500 MB/s or 900 MB/s if it's PCI-E 3.0 (and the controller on the card supports it).  So an 8 port sata controller card will usually be designed with a x4 slot in mind, which means the maximum bandwidth between the system and the controller card will be 2 GB/s. You'd have to transfer data from at least SSD drives at the same time to your computer to hit the limitations of the PCI-E slot, so maximum speeds are less of an issue with sata controllers. 

 

 

[Divyank]

On 9/7/2016 at 4:06 AM, mariushm said:

A port multiplier is like a network switch, it takes one sata port and creates 5 out of them. The connection to the PC is limited by that one sata port.

It's like a network switch, the original sata cable that starts from the motherboard or original sata controller and goes into the port multiplier card is like the WAN port of your switch/router. The five ports created by the port multiplier have the 3gbps or 6gbps bandwidth to the port multiplier chip, but from there all the communication is done through that single sata cable back to the motherboard or sata controller.

 

For example if you're transferring data from two SSD drives at the same time and each SSD is capable of reaching up to 450-500 MB/s , the maximum speed is restricted by the 500 MB/s maximum speed of the original sata cable, so in the end you'll copy data with about 200-250 MB/s from each SSD.

 

In contrast, a sata controller is usually connected to the computer through a PCI Express slot, where each x1 is capable of 500 MB/s or 900 MB/s if it's PCI-E 3.0 (and the controller on the card supports it).  So an 8 port sata controller card will usually be designed with a x4 slot in mind, which means the maximum bandwidth between the system and the controller card will be 2 GB/s. You'd have to transfer data from at least SSD drives at the same time to your computer to hit the limitations of the PCI-E slot, so maximum speeds are less of an issue with sata controllers. 

 

 

Than I want more ports instead of multiplier