Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

SATA port add-on card

Options
  • 18-03-2011 5:21pm
    #1
    michaelpwilson
    Registered Users Posts: 51 ✭✭


    Hi there, I'm trying to find a PCIe card that will allow me to increase the number of SATA ports on my desktop. I already have 10 SATA ports (6 on the motherboard, 4 on a Promise SATA300 TX4 card). However, now I have more SATA devices than ports, and I'd like to increase them.

    My question is, does anyone know of a card that will give me more SATA ports than the 4 that my Promise card does?

    I must stress that I am not interested in RAID of any description - striping, mirroring, and spanning are of no interest to me. Some of the SATA drives I want to connect already have data on them, and I do not want to have to reconfigure the drives in setting up a RAID array or anything of that nature.

    Ideally, I would like to replace my Promise SATA card with another PCIe SATA card which has 10 or more SATA ports (or mini-SAS ports which could convert to SATA ports) with compatibility for SATA capacities of 3 TB and greater with 6 Gb/sec throughput as in SATA-III, although I would settle for SATA-II and a 2TB limit if that is my only option. I hear that even using a RAID card in JBOD mode involves reconfiguring the drives and I don't want to do this. Having said that, if there is a RAID card that can be used in such a way that I can plug in my SATA drives as-is without any reconfiguration whatsoever then I would be interested in this.

    Obviously I do not want to go the route of simply plugging in external drives via USB/e-SATA. I have a large tower machine and I want to use the available space inside it, avoiding having lots of external boxes and hubs. Nor do I want to use a docking station and plug in the drives as I need them, as the ports on the back of the drives have a limited insertion/ejection life.

    I have already contacted Promise, Supermicro, Adaptec, and a few other manufacturers regarding my requirements but to date have had no luck. Apparently my specification is too arcane. Can anyone here with a knowledge of storage systems give me some advice? Thanks in advance!


Advertisement