Why so many SATA ports?

[slowpogo]

While I've been researching motherboards the past few months, the question that repeatedly pops in my head is: why do motherboards have so many SATA ports? I can maybe see having 4, but most mainstream/enthusiast boards have 6, or even 8. How many people are really running two SATA optical drives and 4 hard drives? Or one optical and SEVEN hard drives? I realize in the future SATA will be the standard for optical drives, but still...it seems that now or in the future it's a little excessive. The system I'm building will have one IDE optical and a single 250GB SATA hard drive, which should last me a long time...I've gotten by on 150GB the last 5 years. Which leaves me with at least 5 unused SATA ports.

Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

 

[Shadow Conception]

Servers, businesses, etc. They need a lot of space for backups, mirror images, OSes, and stuff like that.

 

[Peter]

The reason is RAID - for a decent setup (either RAID 5 or at least 0+1), you'll need four drives already. Add an optical or two, and there go your six ports.

So much for servers and workstations. On a normal desktop board, that's just the featuritis that seems to be festering on the more "high end enthusiast" offerings.

 

[rbV5]

Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

Your needs are different than other's needs. Why would you deem a particular number of drives excessive given your lack of storage need/use? btw 150GB's is good for only a few hours of HD video and isn't much of a drive these days if you have a need for storing video.

 

[ruffilb]

I'm using at least 3 out of my 6 drives. I'm thankful for them.

Beats the hell out of ATA.

 

[obeseotron]

I've got 4 hard drives and 2 optical drives, it's not a crazy thing for an enthusiast to have. It would probably cost more money to make a different southbridge without the enthusiast/pro features than it would to just make a lot of the same southbridge to be used across different segments.

 

[slowpogo]

Originally posted by: rbV5

Can anyone shed some light on this for me?

Your needs are different than other's needs. Why would you deem a particular number of drives excessive given your lack of storage need/use? btw 150GB's is good for only a few hours of HD video and isn't much of a drive these days if you have a need for storing video.

Well, that's why I ask. I think I'm a pretty typical user -- I play games, use Dreamweaver and Photoshop, and do home studio audio work with Cubase/Wavelab. My future 250GB HD is more than sufficient for this use -- plenty of room for hours and hours of 24-bit audio, digital photos and large games. I may decide to add another drive in the future, but maybe not.

I understand SOME people out there have use for 1000+ GB of storage, but so many as to make it a standard feature on almost EVERY board, even budget ones? I'd wager that for the average PC user, 300GB would be more than enough storage.

But, I suppose the manufacturing/design cost angle makes sense. thanks guys...

 

[Bateluer]

Hmm, I was wondering why motherboards don't come with more than 8. I'm already using 4 of my 6 SATA ports, and thats without optical drives.

At the moment, I've got 1 160GB hdd, 2 300GB hdds, and 1 500GB hdd, plus two PATA DVD drives. And I can see the day fast approaching when I'll have to buy more hard drives.

 

[Rangoric]

Over time people will end up getting more hard drives.

Having all those Sata slots means you never have to replace a drive. Just add one. Well most of the time

 

[lopri]

Another possible reason is that today's fat dual-slot video cards may block one or two SATA port(s) depending on the designs (be it the board's or the video card's)

 

[tallman45]

Photoshop runs far better when the Scratch disk is on a different physical drive that the OS and the Photos. Just that application alone is a great candidate for 3 hard drives.

Performance is the reason why even a casual desktop user would benefit from multiple drives on independant channels. Setting up a well tuned system means reducing any bottlenecks that can be caused with all disk drive traffic going down the same path.

Pick up at least one cheap SATA drive for your PS Scratch disk, you can find these for around $30 and the difference will astound you.

 

[Peter]

... better yet, get two and give PS a striped RAID set for scratch disk purposes.

 

[Missing Ghost]

I always use seperate controllers that sit on expansion cards when I have huge storage needs. For me the ones that are on the mobo are for basic desktop computers with low storage needs. Those don't need more than two sata ports, opticals being on ata.

 

[n7]

I am using 4 SATA ports right now, since that's all they put on this A8N32-SLI Deluxe

Damn Asus for cheaping out on SATA ports.

I cannot even add a PCI SATA controller card to get more, since all my PCI slots are used or inacessible.

So i hope for more mobos that have 8 SATA as standard so someday i can have my dual burners + 6 SATA HDDs.

 

[Nocturnal]

First and foremost, you are no longer in 1996. This is 2006 and yes, people now days do indeed run several hard drives and perhaps a few optical drives. Just look at the M2N32, they removed one IDE channel and left just one.

 

[jlbenedict]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal
First and foremost, you are no longer in 1996. This is 2006 and yes, people now days do indeed run several hard drives and perhaps a few optical drives. Just look at the M2N32, they removed one IDE channel and left just one.

Well said!

I agree as well; we need to move forward with technology; not back or at a standstill.

I look forward to the day when all optical drives are on the SATA bus, and IDE ports are put to their graves.

 

[slowpogo]

Who said anything about 1996? Anyway, I had a misconception of what RAID is; now that I understand it better it makes sense that people would have multiple hard drives.

STILL, it must be conceded that the majority of home PC owners (who probably shop at Best Buy or Dell) are perfectly happy with one or two hard drives. I realize ASUS isn't designing motherboards for those people, but I didn't think that building your own PC was restricted to hardcore enthusiasts who demand multiple HD arrays.

anyway, with a better understanding of RAID I now plan on grabbing two 80GB Seagates (raid 0) now, and getting more storage a little down the road. So, I will be using 3-4 ports after all. thanks...

 

[yuchai]

Don't forget eSATA too. You can get backplates that provides external ports that link to your internal ports. SATA is so much faster for hard drives than firewire or USB.

 

[tw1164]

I'd love to move to all SATA, where are the SATA optical drives...even the new blueray drives are EIDE??!

 

[Shadow Conception]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal
First and foremost, you are no longer in 1996. This is 2006 and yes, people now days do indeed run several hard drives and perhaps a few optical drives. Just look at the M2N32, they removed one IDE channel and left just one.

Yes, but most unfortunately, Dell with their budget PCs are still back in 1996, with no AGP ports. Shame.

 

[openwheelformula1]

it takes almost 10 gigs for 1 hour of recording in HD. It's better to have a few extra sata ports, trust me.

 

[slowpogo]

Is it really that common for people to be recording dozens of HOURS of HD video? I'm more out of the loop than I thought.

 

[CyborgNinja117]

Uber Raid

 

[GeekDrew]

Originally posted by: slowpogo
Is it really that common for people to be recording dozens of HOURS of HD video? I'm more out of the loop than I thought.

Well, Joe Consumer may not be doing it right now, but there are plenty of compuer geeks/nerds/etc that are doing it now. I we're doing it now, I'm sure that it will become popular in the next few years.

Yes, extra SATA ports are definitely a good thing.