SATA Ports and Hard Drives

[adgjk]

I was hoping that I could get something cleared up before I spend money on some new and larger HDDs/SSDs. My motherboard is an AsRock Fatal1ty z370 Professional Gaming i7. It has 8 physical SATA ports on the board, as well as 3x m.2 ports. I am currently only using SATA drives, and do not plan on buying any m.2 drives. 

 

I was thinking that I'd be able to buy 8 separate drives and have them all work, but upon reading the specifications on AsRock's website here, I'm not sure if that's possible. 

 

Quote

M2_1, SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.
M2_2, SATA3_4 and SATA3_5 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.
If M2_3 is occupied by a SATA-type M.2 device, SATA3_3 will be disabled.

Now, will this only be affected if I were to buy an m.2 drive (this is what I'm hoping), or can I only have a max of 6 drives on this motherboard, even if they're all SATA (this is what I'm thinking)? 

 

I feel like I already have drives plugged into SATA3_0 and SATA3_1, but I haven't looked inside my computer since I built it over a year ago, so I could be wrong. 

[MrMcMuffinJr]

4 minutes ago, adgjk said:

I was hoping that I could get something cleared up before I spend money on some new and larger HDDs/SSDs. My motherboard is an AsRock Fatal1ty z370 Professional Gaming i7. It has 8 physical SATA ports on the board, as well as 3x m.2 ports. I am currently only using SATA drives, and do not plan on buying any m.2 drives. 

 

I was thinking that I'd be able to buy 8 separate drives and have them all work, but upon reading the specifications on AsRock's website here, I'm not sure if that's possible. 

 

Now, will this only be affected if I were to buy an m.2 drive (this is what I'm hoping), or can I only have a max of 6 drives on this motherboard, even if they're all SATA (this is what I'm thinking)? 

 

I feel like I already have drives plugged into SATA3_0 and SATA3_1, but I haven't looked inside my computer since I built it over a year ago, so I could be wrong. 

define Professional Gaming i7

 

[Eastman51]

They wouldn't give you 8 SATA ports if you couldn't use them all. Those statements are only telling you that if an M.2 slot is occupied, then those SATA ports will be disabled because of lane sharing. There's no lane to share if there's no M.2 device installed. I use 5 of the 6 SATA ports on my motherboard, and I run an M.2 SSD; but my SSD is installed in an expansion card so that I can use the 5th SATA port that would typically be disabled if I used the motherboard's M.2 slot.

[adgjk]

5 minutes ago, adgjk said:

I was thinking that I'd be able to buy 8 separate drives and have them all work, but upon reading the specifications on AsRock's website here, I'm not sure if that's possible. 

 

1 minute ago, MrMcMuffinJr said:

define Professional Gaming i7

 

I linked the board in my original post

[adgjk]

1 minute ago, Eastman51 said:

They wouldn't give you 8 SATA ports if you couldn't use them all. Those statements are only telling you that if an M.2 slot is occupied, then those SATA ports will be disabled because of lane sharing. There's no lane to share if there's no M.2 device installed. I use 5 of the 6 SATA ports on my motherboard, and I run an M.2 SSD; but my SSD is installed in an expansion card so that I can use the 5th SATA port that would typically be disabled if I used the motherboard's M.2 slot.

Good to know. That's what I'd hoped, I just thought maybe their description was a little misleading? I feel like it should be something more along the lines of:

M2_1 and SATA3_0, SATA3_1 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled (instead of M2_1, SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 share lanes).

 

Maybe I'm just overtired

[MrMcMuffinJr]

3 minutes ago, adgjk said:

 

I linked the board in my original post

oh I see. thats literally in the name. thought you were one of those people who generalize processors.

[Eastman51]

Just now, adgjk said:

Good to know. That's what I'd hoped, I just thought maybe their description was a little misleading? I feel like it should be something more along the lines of:

M2_1 and SATA3_0, SATA3_1 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled (instead of M2_1, SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 share lanes).

 

Maybe I'm just overtired

The wording is awful, for sure. 
I think it should read something more like this: "If a device is installed in M2_1, then SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 will be disabled."

[homeap5]

That boards uses two sata controllers. You can use all 8 sata ports. POST may be a little slower (initialization of second controller) but everything will work.