Connecting multiple hard drives

[Frifi]

Hi all.

I have a question on storage methods. To many drives but not enough SATA ports on my board.
SSo what I want to do is try connect multiple drives with one SATA cable, Is that possible or not yet?
As far as I know SATA cables are point to point, but is there another way to connect multiple SATA HDD's on one SATA cable (Like IDE for example).
I have enough space in my case for all the drives and it gets irritating to switch cables everytime. Dont care much about transfer speed.

Thanks in advance.

 

[memadmax]

No, not possible to daisy-chain(2 or more on one cable) with SATA.

You will have to get a PCI/PCI-Express SATA expansion card.

 

[hang-the-9]

Or get an exteral drive bay for USB or eSata or a NAS.

 

[Pyree]

You can use a SATA port multiplier if your controller supports it. However, many controller don't support port multiplier since this is not a standard for SATA specification.

The safest external option is to get a multi bay NAS or enclosure (for enclosure, use USB 3.0 and/or eSATA connection to avoid bandwidth problem). Safest internal option is to buy PCIe SATA controller card.