Cheapest way to handle lots of SATA2 drives? 8+ drives

[PaperclipGod]

Help me out here, guys 'n gals!

I looked quickly through newegg, and all i saw under controller cards for SATA2 drives was big, expensive RAID stuff. Since I'm not planning on using hardware RAID, I don't need all of those features... basically I just need a motherboard with lots of SATA2 connectors. Barring that, I need a cheap expansion board that just adds more SATA2 connectors.

Is it possible for more than one drive to share a single SATA2 bus/connector? A Y-adaptor, maybe? Or how about chaining a couple drives together? I don't suppose SATA2 has any equivalent to the old master/slave jumpers...?

 

[Hardlin]

SATA is a point to point connection so you can't connect more than one drive to each port without some form of a replicator. Some RAID cards let you connect multiple devices and run them in a JBOD configuration so that may be a way for you to go.

edit: Have you looked at using a SAS controller to get the density you are looking for? An example is: http://www.supermicro.com/prod...addon/AOC-USAS-L8i.cfm

 

[techmanc]

This would get you 10 SATA ports if you dont mind building an Intel system based on these motherboards................


http://www.newegg.com/Product/...StoreType=&srchInDesc=

 

[Syran]

Check out the SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card for $99 @ Newegg. It will work in a standard PCI slot, I'm using 2 of these for my Un-raid box.