Adding SATA ports

[Lupus42]

Ok, I have a question about adding SATA ports to your motherboard.

I'm in the process of planning out a new rig for myself after the new year. The motherboard I want to use only has 6 SATA ports. I need 7 but would like to add at least 4 more SATA ports. I really want these to support RAID. I'd like to use 1 port for my OS 1TB SSD, 1 port for my DVD/CD burner, 4 ports in a RAID 5 with 4 1TB HDD's, and 4 ports in RAID 0 with 4 250GB HDD's.

Any suggestions?

 

[EarthDog]

Yes... why the need for such a complicated setup?

If required, get a motherboard with 8 ports... though you will be hard-pressed to have two different RAID arrays on the same controller I believe (never tried, I am guessing).

And, do you need 10 ports? 1+1+4+4?

 

[trents]

Buy an add on PCI-e RAID card.

 

[EarthDog]

Buy an add on PCI-e RAID card.

I forgot to say that, lol!!

A simple $20-40 card that supports the RAID modes you need will suit your purpose. For example...https://www.newegg.com/highpoint-rocket-640l-sata-iii/p/N82E16816115114

 

[HankB]

Re: RAID card. I don't know how common this is, but I have an LSI card that will not pass TRIM commands. I'm guessing/hoping that newer cards do not have this limitation, but it could be a concern if you ever want to put an SSD on that card.

Of course, that begs the question if TRIM is really needed. I did some benchmarks on a RAID0 of 4 EVO 850s after a *lot* of disk I/O w/out TRIM, after recreating the RAID following secure erase of the drives and again after sufficient activity to write all blocks and following TRIM. I was surprised that performance was only slightly better following erase or batch TRIM operations. This is on Linux and using the ZFS filesystem which features copy on write. It's worst case for writing all over the drive and there is zero possibility that the drive firmware understands the filesystem (and can reset blocks on its own.) Others here have claimed that TRIM is not that important and I want to disagree with that, but remain unable to find evidence of that.

 

[trents]

If I understand the OP's first post correctly, he only intends to put spinners in the RAID.

https://www.amazon.com/N-ORANIE-Con...TA+RAID+controller&qid=1575566461&sr=8-3&th=1

RAID 0,1,10 https://www.marvell.com/storage/system-solutions/assets/Marvell-88SE92xx-002-product-brief.pdf

Apparently, Windows 10 has the built-in drivers for this card, according to a customer review on Amazon.

 

[HankB]

If I understand the OP's first post correctly, he only intends to put spinners in the RAID.

Yes, that's the immediate plan. Someday he may want to use SSDs.