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Khali
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Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 12:34 am

I picked out and ordered parts for a new system. It all showed up, except the case (still in transit), and I was looking everything over and I realized I had made a big mistake with the motherboard. It only has 4 sata ports and I need 6. :oops:

I currently have a 1TB HDD and two 512 GB SSD's, and a optical drive I want to use from my old system. I ordered a 1TB SSD, 4TB HDD, and a 250 GB M.2 for a boot drive. I could leave out the 1TB HDD but the rest I have a need to be in the system. So I thought I might be able to get a PCIe sata card. There are a few on Newegg but they are all brands I had never heard of before. I was wondering if any one here had used these in the past and could recommend which one to get?

Disclaimer, yes I use the optical drive so it needs to stay. I also pretty much blew the budget so no, I can't afford to replace the two 512GB SSD's with one more 1TB SSD.

By blowing the budget I mean I went all out and ordered my dream machine.

Intel Core i9-9900K Coffee Lake 8-Core, 16-Thread, 3.6 GHz (5.0 GHz Turbo)
ASUS Prime Z390-P
Noctua NH-D15, Premium CPU Cooler with 2x NF-A15 PWM 140mm Fans
CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3000
EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC ULTRA GAMING
SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2 2280 250GB
SAMSUNG 860 EVO Series 2.5" 1TB
TOSHIBA X300 4TB Desktop Hard Drive
Seasonic PRIME Ultra 850W 80+ Platinum Power Supply
Fractal Design Define R6 USB-C White Brushed Aluminum
Noctua NF-A14 PWM chromax.black.swap, 4-Pin Premium Quiet Fan
 
just brew it!
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 1:24 am

In your situation, I'd probably ditch the 1TB HDD and get an external USB optical drive.

Consumer PCIe SATA cards are pretty hit-or-miss. Something with a Silicon Image or Marvell chipset will probably be OK, but quality varies and I've never been completely satisfied with any of them unless you go all the way back to the Promise TX4 (which is old enough that it was a legacy PCI card not PCIe, and didn't support 6 Gbps SATA).

These days I recommend "new old stock" enterprise gear if you need to add SATA ports, e.g. something like https://www.amazon.com/SAS9211-8I-8PORT ... 002RL8I7M/ (but that's overkill in your case, and possibly out of your price range).

Another possibility... I'd be willing to send you a 2-port PCIe SATA card (or two) from my spares pile for the cost of shipping (see the decluttering thread). But we'd need to verify driver availability for your OS (Windows 10, I assume...) since these are mostly older cards, and I've been running Linux for the past decade or so and haven't really paid attention to how well some of these chipsets are supported in Windows 10. Upside is you get a tested (albeit in Linux) card... I'd probably just send you the one out of my recently retired file server.
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The Egg
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 2:18 am

You could also throw all the mechanical drives back in your old system and turn it into a NAS.
 
meerkt
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 9:54 am

I imagine all the common Marvell, ASMedia, etc., chips have stock Windows drivers.

I'm not using any such card, but I assume the current best cheap 4 port chip would be Marvell 88SE9215. Such cards can be found on eBay for < $20.
 
anotherengineer
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 10:01 am

Khali wrote:
I picked out and ordered parts for a new system. It all showed up, except the case (still in transit), and I was looking everything over and I realized I had made a big mistake with the motherboard. It only has 4 sata ports and I need 6. :oops:

I currently have a 1TB HDD and two 512 GB SSD's, and a optical drive I want to use from my old system. I ordered a 1TB SSD, 4TB HDD, and a 250 GB M.2 for a boot drive. I could leave out the 1TB HDD but the rest I have a need to be in the system. So I thought I might be able to get a PCIe sata card. There are a few on Newegg but they are all brands I had never heard of before. I was wondering if any one here had used these in the past and could recommend which one to get?

Disclaimer, yes I use the optical drive so it needs to stay. I also pretty much blew the budget so no, I can't afford to replace the two 512GB SSD's with one more 1TB SSD.

By blowing the budget I mean I went all out and ordered my dream machine.

Intel Core i9-9900K Coffee Lake 8-Core, 16-Thread, 3.6 GHz (5.0 GHz Turbo)
ASUS Prime Z390-P
Noctua NH-D15, Premium CPU Cooler with 2x NF-A15 PWM 140mm Fans
CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3000
EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC ULTRA GAMING
SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2 2280 250GB
SAMSUNG 860 EVO Series 2.5" 1TB
TOSHIBA X300 4TB Desktop Hard Drive
Seasonic PRIME Ultra 850W 80+ Platinum Power Supply
Fractal Design Define R6 USB-C White Brushed Aluminum
Noctua NF-A14 PWM chromax.black.swap, 4-Pin Premium Quiet Fan



Looking at your build, money isn't an object. Replace/exchange the motherboard with one that has 6 or 8 ports.
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Usacomp2k3
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 10:39 am

1 vote either a card like JBI linked

Or buy a single bigger spinner and go down to 3 internal drives. I personally don’t like dealing with multiple internal drive letters so I never have more than an OS and a data drive in the machine.
 
meerkt
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 11:15 am

BTW, why a 250GB SSD? It's smaller than the performance/price sweet spot.
If replacement is still an option, maybe change the 1 + 0.25TB drives to a single 2TB, or even a single 1TB M2.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
I personally don’t like dealing with multiple internal drive letters

You can symlink them.
 
Khali
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 12:07 pm

anotherengineer wrote:
Khali wrote:
I picked out and ordered parts for a new system. It all showed up, except the case (still in transit), and I was looking everything over and I realized I had made a big mistake with the motherboard. It only has 4 sata ports and I need 6. :oops:

I currently have a 1TB HDD and two 512 GB SSD's, and a optical drive I want to use from my old system. I ordered a 1TB SSD, 4TB HDD, and a 250 GB M.2 for a boot drive. I could leave out the 1TB HDD but the rest I have a need to be in the system. So I thought I might be able to get a PCIe sata card. There are a few on Newegg but they are all brands I had never heard of before. I was wondering if any one here had used these in the past and could recommend which one to get?

Disclaimer, yes I use the optical drive so it needs to stay. I also pretty much blew the budget so no, I can't afford to replace the two 512GB SSD's with one more 1TB SSD.

By blowing the budget I mean I went all out and ordered my dream machine.

Intel Core i9-9900K Coffee Lake 8-Core, 16-Thread, 3.6 GHz (5.0 GHz Turbo)
ASUS Prime Z390-P
Noctua NH-D15, Premium CPU Cooler with 2x NF-A15 PWM 140mm Fans
CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3000
EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 XC ULTRA GAMING
SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2 2280 250GB
SAMSUNG 860 EVO Series 2.5" 1TB
TOSHIBA X300 4TB Desktop Hard Drive
Seasonic PRIME Ultra 850W 80+ Platinum Power Supply
Fractal Design Define R6 USB-C White Brushed Aluminum
Noctua NF-A14 PWM chromax.black.swap, 4-Pin Premium Quiet Fan



Looking at your build, money isn't an object. Replace/exchange the motherboard with one that has 6 or 8 ports.


I saved for 5 years to pay for this. So yes money is an object since I spent every last bit of that savings on this system. Restocking fees and shipping are going to be half as much as I paid for the motherboard to start with.

meerkt wrote:
BTW, why a 250GB SSD? It's smaller than the performance/price sweet spot.
If replacement is still an option, maybe change the 1 + 0.25TB drives to a single 2TB, or even a single 1TB M2.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
I personally don’t like dealing with multiple internal drive letters

You can symlink them.


The 250GB is going to be my boot drive and nothing else. Its probably actually bigger than needed. The 1TB is going to be my Steam drive. As to an external optical drive, just no. I don't want to go back to the days of the Commodore 64 with my systems guts spread all over my desk.

JBI, thanks for the offer, I appreciate it. I will pass though since everything I have read leads me to believe these older cards will have issues working with Windows 10.

I will see if I can find a Marvel card on Newegg or Amazon. Probably this one. https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01IDNSUNO/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?smid=A3K3FTAOC3JW99&psc=1
 
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 12:15 pm

Khali wrote:
As to an external optical drive, just no. I don't want to go back to the days of the Commodore 64 with my systems guts spread all over my desk.

You could attach it to the top of your case with double-sided foam tape.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
DrCR
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 3:23 pm

Give the present cash flow situation, you could install but leave disconnected the 1TB and optical drives for the immediate future. (Perhaps temporarily connect the former to transfer the data to the 4TB)
 
Chrispy_
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 4:51 pm

First SATA port:
The 1TB drive is going to be worthlessly slow and old compared to your other storage. Transfer the contents to the 4TB drive and ditch it.

Second SATA port:
USB internal header to USB-A Female adapter > USB to SATA adapter > The slowest 512GB SSD.

In saying that, the ASUS Prime board is trash. Asus budget boards are vastly inferior to Gigabyte/Asrock boards of the same price. If you can't afford Asus' higher-end boards, just stay well clear of Asus. My recommendation is to send the board back for a similarly priced alternative. The GIGABYTE Z390 GAMING X for example retails for the same price as the Asus Prime Z390-P but you get more power phases, more ports, better VRM cooling, Intel NIC instead of Realtek, all six SATA ports, a higher spec ALC audio codec, a nicer I/O shield for the back, a nicer IO port cover, an NVMe SSD heatsink, and the moon on a stick.

Seriously, budget ASUS boards are junk because they cost more than non-budget boards from everyone else. Don't cripple yourself for the sake of blind brand loyalty!
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Waco
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Sun Jan 27, 2019 8:55 pm

Anything with a Marvell chipset will "just work" in Windows, Linux, BSD, etc. You can get cheap ones for $30 or so that'll run 4 HDDs at line rate without much hassle at all. They're PCIe x1 in general, so you can toss them in otherwised unused slots.
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Chrispy_
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Mon Jan 28, 2019 8:58 am

At $30 for a clunky fix of using a Marvel add-in board, you might as well return the mobo and buy one that's $30 better - for a long-term system on a power-hungry K-series chip that needs to last many years, I'm not sure an ultra-budget board with minimal power phases and VRM cooling is a good idea.

The last thing you want with a power-hungry card like the 2080 is another PCIe card and SATA cables interfering with the airflow in the slots below it. Not that I care, but if you have a case window it'll look cheap and ugly too.
Congratulations, you've noticed that this year's signature is based on outdated internet memes; CLICK HERE NOW to experience this unforgettable phenomenon. This sentence is just filler and as irrelevant as my signature.
 
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Re: Help! Not enough Sata ports

Mon Jan 28, 2019 9:30 am

just brew it! wrote:
Khali wrote:
As to an external optical drive, just no. I don't want to go back to the days of the Commodore 64 with my systems guts spread all over my desk.

You could attach it to the top of your case with double-sided foam tape.


LOL--that's pretty funny; thanks for the post!
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