Can I modify a bios to recognize two SATA ports as one and boot from it?

[WildWestRonin]

I have an incredibly old motherboard but it was free and I'm going extremely cheap on my first PC build. That said, I'll also have a raspberry pi to play around with (we're getting a pi-hole) and I was thinking that with the proper code in linux I could get SATA 3 speeds where only SATA 2 ports exist by doubling up (3 gigs for SATA 2, 6 gigs for SATA 3), because otherwise my planned SSD card would be capped to half speeds basically, and not give that much improvement over the 'always on' CFM type enterprise HDD I have my eyes on.

 

I basically want to know if it's possible to get the bios to run with 2 SATA ports recognized as one even as a boot device, because of course I'd want to boot from my SSD.  If this isn't possible I don't want to waste time on it, but this project for me is as much about learning a lot and gaining experience as having a baller PC and the laptop I daily drive has decent specs and can run the games that I intend to play.

 

other info - I have 4 SATAs and 1 eSATA (external SATA, a little bit tougher) and I also have friends with much more experience with a variety of linux kernels, but I plan on running the actual pc as a windows system because of my planned use case.

[dreamcast4599]

7 minutes ago, WildWestRonin said:

I have an incredibly old motherboard but it was free and I'm going extremely cheap on my first PC build. That said, I'll also have a raspberry pi to play around with (we're getting a pi-hole) and I was thinking that with the proper code in linux I could get SATA 3 speeds where only SATA 2 ports exist by doubling up (3 gigs for SATA 2, 6 gigs for SATA 3), because otherwise my planned SSD card would be capped to half speeds basically, and not give that much improvement over the 'always on' CFM type enterprise HDD I have my eyes on.

 

I basically want to know if it's possible to get the bios to run with 2 SATA ports recognized as one even as a boot device, because of course I'd want to boot from my SSD.  If this isn't possible I don't want to waste time on it, but this project for me is as much about learning a lot and gaining experience as having a baller PC and the laptop I daily drive has decent specs and can run the games that I intend to play.

 

other info - I have 4 SATAs and 1 eSATA (external SATA, a little bit tougher) and I also have friends with much more experience with a variety of linux kernels, but I plan on running the actual pc as a windows system because of my planned use case.

if the motherboars only support sata 2 speeds its impossible to double the ports and even if you found a way to do so it would only run at sata 2 speeds due to it being hard wired for that speed

[WhitetailAni]

6 minutes ago, WildWestRonin said:

because otherwise my planned SSD card would be capped to half speeds basically, and not give that much improvement over the 'always on' CFM type enterprise HDD I have my eyes on.

False. HDDs may have decent sequential read/write speeds where the data is in a nice, neat line, but they suck at random read/write speeds. SSDs are better at this since there's no moving parts - the SSD's controller is given a coordinate, looks at that coordinate on the NAND flash, and then reports back what it says.

8 minutes ago, WildWestRonin said:

I basically want to know if it's possible to get the bios to run with 2 SATA ports recognized as one even as a boot device

This is not possible, at least not that I know of, though maybe with a bunch of hardware-level modifications it might be possible? I wouldn't waste time on it though - 300 MB/s is still plenty fast for a SATA SSD.

[WildWestRonin]

1 minute ago, dreamcast4599 said:

if the motherboars only support sata 2 speeds its impossible to double the ports and even if you found a way to do so it would only run at sata 2 speeds due to it being hard wired for that speed

the idea is that it would use two connections simultaneously, doubling the speeds overall without affecting the individual connections at all. It would be like a reverse Y splitter in that sense.

[WildWestRonin]

2 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

False. HDDs may have decent sequential read/write speeds where the data is in a nice, neat line, but they suck at random read/write speeds. SSDs are better at this since there's no moving parts - the SSD's controller is given a coordinate, looks at that coordinate on the NAND flash, and then reports back what it says.

Duly noted, I'll probably be getting the same SSD either way honestly, because I think it may significantly outlast the main system itself, but it is true that the modern consumer HDDs using the magnetic shingles technology are significantly worse at that sort of thing than the older / enterprise tech that I will have.

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, WildWestRonin said:

Duly noted, I'll probably be getting the same SSD either way honestly, because I think it may significantly outlast the main system itself, but it is true that the modern consumer HDDs using the magnetic shingles technology are significantly worse at that sort of thing than the older / enterprise tech that I will have.

I'm not sure; I haven't really paid attention to SMR vs CMR, though other people here will know.

[Freakwise]

Sorry if I'm wrong bcs I'm kinda confused but

But maybe what you need is raid 0?

[Alvin853]

12 minutes ago, WildWestRonin said:

the idea is that it would use two connections simultaneously, doubling the speeds overall without affecting the individual connections at all. It would be like a reverse Y splitter in that sense.

SATA is a serial connection, so with a Y splitter the controller on the SSD would send the same data to each of the MBs SATA-ports, no easy way to split the signal in 2. In theory it might be possible, if you make a special controller board, that has a SATA3-connection to the SSD, and 2 SATA2-connections to the MB and reports as a RAID-0-device, thus splitting the data between the two connections. But I don't think a device like that exists, and it's probably very hard to make one.

 

9 minutes ago, WildWestRonin said:

Duly noted, I'll probably be getting the same SSD either way honestly, because I think it may significantly outlast the main system itself, but it is true that the modern consumer HDDs using the magnetic shingles technology are significantly worse at that sort of thing than the older / enterprise tech that I will have.

SMR (shingled magnetic recording) HDDs seem to be mostly used in external HDDs these days, because the manufacturers realized they're not performing well enough to be in constant use like most internal HDDs. So even most consumer internal HDDs are now back to CMR, which performs just fine, just do a little bit of research on the specific model before you buy one.

[WildWestRonin]

1 hour ago, Freakwise said:

Sorry if I'm wrong bcs I'm kinda confused but

But maybe what you need is raid 0?

no, actually the opposite! after a google search, raid zero is still meant for spreading data across multiple storage devices. although it is faster than other methods for that purpose, what I am looking for is a way to use two connections for one drive. now that I mention it, though, you might be on to something. If I mimic raid zero in the raspberry pi, it might be able to acknowledge the device without any really weird tricks or high latency.

[WildWestRonin]

1 hour ago, Alvin853 said:

SATA is a serial connection, so with a Y splitter the controller on the SSD would send the same data to each of the MBs SATA-ports, no easy way to split the signal in 2. In theory it might be possible, if you make a special controller board, that has a SATA3-connection to the SSD, and 2 SATA2-connections to the MB and reports as a RAID-0-device, thus splitting the data between the two connections. But I don't think a device like that exists, and it's probably very hard to make one.

 

SMR (shingled magnetic recording) HDDs seem to be mostly used in external HDDs these days, because the manufacturers realized they're not performing well enough to be in constant use like most internal HDDs. So even most consumer internal HDDs are now back to CMR, which performs just fine, just do a little bit of research on the specific model before you buy one.

Thank you on both points! Actually, for the first point you made, I just came to that conclusion from another comment XD so good job beating me to the punch. As hard as it may be, I'm looking to learn a lot from this project so I just might do it I just might admit after the fact if it proves too difficult. I will have a raspberry pi at my disposal to serve as the controller board, and I don't have it yet so I can look for the best option to do both jobs before I buy.

As to the hard drives, I wasn't aware of this trend reversal, but I am planning on buying used (and backing up using someone else's local computer as a NAS for the most important stuff) meaning that hasn't reached the marketplaces / price-ranges I was looking at. Thanks to this information, I will take a look at new stuff again, and see how it compares.

 

P.S. edits have been made. Don't know if you get re-notified or what the etiquette is on here.

Edited July 27, 2021 by WildWestRonin
Explain that I will in fact be doing mad science