I’m looking at some common desktop motherboards and a lot of them only have like 2 or 4 SATA ports. (But do have other M.2 or PCIe slots.)
How do people connect 10 hard drive disks to something like this? Or do I have to purchase an Enterprise Server Motherboard to support this use case?
I’m trying to build my own NAS/media center and I want a ton of storage.
DO NOT USE REGULAR PCI-E CARDS THAT ADD SATA PORTS. Many are unreliable. What you want is called a SAS Host Bus Adapter card and you want to get one that’s pre-flashed in IT mode.
The LSI 9207 is a good choice.
Make sure you get the correct SAS to SATA cables and you are set. You can add 8 to 16 SATA drives with a single, high speed, and reliable card.
You’re looking for an HBA card flashed into IT mode. There’s a lot of LSI branded cards that can accomplish this. Just do a quick search on eBay and you’ll see tons of different options.
Sorry, on mobile and couldn’t find a good link for ya.
I have a PCI expansion card with 2x SAS ports, each of which can connect 4x SATA HDDs with a cable adapter.
I got a used Dell H200 for $30, because it’s good enough and the ports face UP instead of backwards, which is good for my itx case
Some pcie cards can add a buuunch more sata ports. There are also some m.2 cards that can do this.
There are M.2 adapters that split out 5 SATA ports. I don’t know about their chipsets and whether they require cooling though.
Consider splitting your compute and storage. A dedicated NAS and the connect your compute to it using nfs or iSCSI.
PCIE cards exist that expand SATA data plugs. I don’t know the ins and outs though, as far as bandwidth goes. It also means you need a power supply that can provide enough power and daisy chained cords.
