How much SATA devices can my motherboard Gigabyte GA-X79-UP4 handle?

hidaayat07

Honorable
Apr 5, 2013
44
0
10,530
I need to connect 7/8 SATA devices.
6 hard drives
1/2 optical drives

I know the motherboard supports 2 SATA 6 Gbps and 4 SATA 3 Gbps devices. There are an additional 4 GSATA ports which I don't know what it's used for.

I was wondering if I could plug the extra optical drives in the GSATA ports and it could work.

Please advise.
Thanks