Add SATA ports?

garritynet

Senior member
Oct 3, 2008
416
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Hello,

I just got my SSD in and already have 3, soon to be 4, HDDs. Two are WD6400AAKS and two are just run of the mill 400gig drives. I also have a DVD burner and will be getting a BR burner soon. Thing is I only have 5 SATA ports on my MB. I would like to add another 4 ports.

Should I get another MB or should I try to find a controller card? Any cards I should look at? I want to do this for as cheap as possible.


Thank you!

My MB is a M4A78 Plus.
 

RebateMonger

Elite Member
Dec 24, 2005
11,586
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If you are happy with your motherboard, I'd try a SATA2 PCI-E controller card. It's a LOT less work.

I haven't used them with SSDs, but I use a lot of them with hard disks. I've mostly used Silicon Image-chipset-based cards and they've been reliable. But I seldom benchmark disks, so I can't tell you anything about actual transfer rates of Silicon Image or other SATA2 chipsets.
 

garritynet

Senior member
Oct 3, 2008
416
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0
Thanks. I am going to go with what you said.

I went ahead and grabbed that new HighPoint SATA III card from Newegg. Its only $55 and I plan on sticking my two WD6400AAKS drives on it. For the other five on the MB I will just use the SSD, two optical drives and the two 400gig drives once I get the other one. If I still need more storage I will just go with external options. It seems like a lot of space but both drives are going to be mirrored.

Thanks for your input!