Adding sata ports

[Salted,8]

hey

Does anyone know of a method to add at least 1 more sata port to the motherboard, I can’t use the pcie as it’s in a htpc system and the only one available is taken up by a wifi card, all I want to do is add one more hard internal drive.

thanks

[Unique]

without knowing what connections you have, one option is you can get a USB3 dongle that has a sata connection, so plug into the external USB socket and run the cable inside. obviously you will need a sata power splitter to power the drive, but that would work. you can get various adapters to give extra sata ports. alternately use a USB wifi dongle and use the pcie slot for a sata adapter. that's probably what i would do. USB wifi dongles aren't expensive. or just use a USB external drive. it depends on where you have it setup and if you can see it or want to see it. another option is get a bigger drive to replace the one inside. plenty of options

[Spreadie]

PCIE bifurcation or, if you have a top mounted m.2 pcie slot going spare, one of these:



They ain't cheap, mind, at £70-£80 on Amazon or ebay. Mine was about £35 on aliexpress

A simpler option would be to use the pcie in the system for a sata card and buy a wifi dongle.

[Salted,8]

I’m actually using a a320m-h https://www.gigabyte.com/uk/Motherbo...-S2H-rev-1x#kf inside a Antec Fusion HTPC https://youtu.be/lyc6eVBoK1w,

the graphics card is a two slot card and covers one of the pcie slots, the other is taken with the wifi card, so the only solution might be spreadie’s idea, with two possible problems, obviously the cost is extreme just to add another hard drive and secondly would the graphics card still sit over the chip with a sata plugged into it.

[Spreadie]

What are you willing to spend?

Would a cheap B450 board be a better solution? There are a couple around the £60-£65 mark that offer greater expansion - more slots/extra m.2/extra onboard SATA

[ik9000]

I have this on my machine. There are ribbon expanders to run the hidden pcie slot to an offboard header. Trouble is finding one that fits under your grpahics card and has a clear route for the ribbon cable to get past other bits on your mobo without needing to kink the ribbon (they are not very flexible, and so brittle they damage easily). Mine worked for a while then packed in. Became unstable - i think due to cable strain. I decided the risk wasn't worth it of losing data mid-use so I disconnected it.

Edit, looking at your board I think you might get away with it so long as your case has some extra PCI expansion panels Get two ribbon cables and move everything down so yuor sata card sits in the case where the wifi card is (but from a ribbon cable to the upper PCI slot) and the wifi card similarly sits below that (or vice versa depending on what fits best)

[ik9000]

the alternative if you don't need to use both drives at once is to look into a hot-swap dock/drive bay

[Salted,8]

It’s new mobo, it’s only a hdpc on a ryzen 1200, cheap and cheerful was the idea, I do sell newly built pc’s so would have thought about swapping the mobo out except I accidentally broke the pcie clip on install because the card was so tight a fit.

when you say ribbon expanders I assume you mean a riser card, unfortunately there wouldn’t be anywhere else I could sit the gpu card, I do already have a hot swap bay that I installed the other day, that in part caused this dilemma as it used a sata up, but I wanted that to swap over hard drives that contain either games or movies etc depending on what we want to do.

The other hard drives are to contain some of my vfx works, to show clients what I have done for them but on a tv (I have another setup with a z390-e, i9 and 1080ti for work)

Edit: unless you’re referring to something like this https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/16419040661...CABEgJ4EPD_BwE

[scaryjim]

... Edit: unless you’re referring to something like this https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/16419040661...CABEgJ4EPD_BwE

One of those would potentially give you access to the second PXIe x1 slot, which you could then use to add a SATA card - either in a case slot, or remove the bracket and just shove it somewhere out of the way in the case?

What drives are you currently using? The board has an m.2 and 4 sata ports - I assume they're all already in use? If not could you get an m.2 drive (PCIe or sata) and transfer something onto it? Or one of these https://www.scan.co.uk/products/akas...-motherboard-n might work, although it's only listed as compatible with NUC.

Alternatively, USB - sata adapters are relatively cheap, and usb header -> socket adapters are relatively cheap. So if you've got a spare USB header it's relatively easy to add a sata drive to it. To be fair the PC would then mostly likely see it as USB storage, but if the cabling was entirely internal I'm not sure that'd matter?

[Salted,8]

One of those would potentially give you access to the second PXIe x1 slot, which you could then use to add a SATA card - either in a case slot, or remove the bracket and just shove it somewhere out of the way in the case?

What drives are you currently using? The board has an m.2 and 4 sata ports - I assume they're all already in use? If not could you get an m.2 drive (PCIe or sata) and transfer something onto it? Or one of these https://www.scan.co.uk/products/akas...-motherboard-n might work, although it's only listed as compatible with NUC.

Alternatively, USB - sata adapters are relatively cheap, and usb header -> socket adapters are relatively cheap. So if you've got a spare USB header it's relatively easy to add a sata drive to it. To be fair the PC would then mostly likely see it as USB storage, but if the cabling was entirely internal I'm not sure that'd matter?

saviour dude, thanks.. an m.2 solution that doesn’t cost a fortune, I’ll do that, thank you

[DanceswithUnix]

It looks like you already have the cheapest answer, but just to say you can get a "Sata Port Multiplier" board that takes one sata cable input and gives you the ability to connect multiple drives.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SATA-Port-M.../dp/B016C5FZ2O

[ik9000]

Edit: unless you’re referring to something like this https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/16419040661...CABEgJ4EPD_BwE

Yes those are exactly what I'm talking about. I searched long and hard for ones with L-shaped connectors but couldn't find one annoyingly.

[Spreadie]

It looks like you already have the cheapest answer, but just to say you can get a "Sata Port Multiplier" board that takes one sata cable input and gives you the ability to connect multiple drives.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SATA-Port-M.../dp/B016C5FZ2O

They only downside of SATA port multipliers is that all the ports share the bandwidth of a single SATA 6.0gbps port. It's generally fine as few setups will be utilising several drives at once but it's worth bearing in mind.

[Salted,8]

I did see some of those Sata Port Multipliers on ebay, but I drew the same conclusions as the other person who replied here, depletion.. I will however keep that link thanks as it may be useful in the future and the other other ones I could find were from china.

[b0redom]

Why has no one just suggested either an external USB based HDD, or a bigger HDD? Surely that's the easiest and neatest way to add capacity whilst keeping cost down in the former case and increasing capacity cleanly in the latter case?

[Unique]

Why has no one just suggested either an external USB based HDD, or a bigger HDD? Surely that's the easiest and neatest way to add capacity whilst keeping cost down in the former case and increasing capacity cleanly in the latter case?

both already mentioned in the first reply