Recommendations for SATA expansion?

[bitmap]

Long story short, mobo (mATX Gigabyte B660 DS3H DDR4) has 4 x 6 Gbps SATA connections. Old case has two bays. Purchased a new case and with my ever-expanding collection of drives, I'm retiring an old WD Green that's slow AF and have two new 14 TB drives. New case has 11 bays, I now have 8 drives. Full circle, I need four additional SATA connections.

I see PCIe cards but I know nothing about quality or architecture. I currently have a 5-bay enclosure -- which I can continue to use -- but I eventually want to make sure I have a legitimate SATA controller for these drives. I have also seen some NVMe SATA expanders, which are alluring, however my OS drive is a 1 TB Samsung 980 Pro and the other NVMe slot is labeled in the specs as "CPU" which...I don't understand. I also have zero idea whether these expansion cards are too good to be true.

Anybody have any experience with SATA expansion? Is there another route to go that I'm not thinking about? Should I just stick with the HDD enclosure for the foreseeable future? Thanks in advance!

[Efficient_Good_5784]

Do you have open pcie slots? Why not get an HBA card?

Just know that if you do get an HBA card, you should most likely add a small fan to its heatsink. HBA cards run a bit hot which can produce errors. They're designed to be in cases with a lot of airflow.

[gnattu]

If you have a spare PCIe slot and are willing to invest more, you could consider getting some LSI HBA cards, which are the "legitimate SATA controllers" you mentioned.

[bitmap]

I should have two open PCIe x1 slots. Two are taken up by the A380 + fan. Could either of you show me an example of what you've mentioned so that I know what I'm looking for? I saw these mentioned elsewhere when looking around, but Google-fu doesn't work like it used to...

[TheDreadPirate]

Literally just had this problem on my mATX board. Had 4 SATA drives, my old SATA SSD and 3 storage HDDs. Swapped the SATA SSD for a NVMe SSD, but added 2 hard drives. So I was short 1 SATA connection.

I'm assuming that since you have an mATX board with an Arc GPU, that your only open slot is a 1x PCIe slot like mine. All of the "legit" LSI HBA cards I found had PCIe 4x connectors.

I got this HBA card with a commonly used ASMedia controller.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Y1NRHX3

No performance or stability issues so far.

[bitmap]

Literally just had this problem on my mATX board.  Had 4 SATA drives, my old SATA SSD and 3 storage HDDs.  Swapped the SATA SSD for a NVMe SSD, but added 2 hard drives.  So I was short 1 SATA connection.

I'm assuming that since you have an mATX board with an Arc GPU, that your only open slot is a 1x PCIe slot like mine.  All of the "legit" LSI HBA cards I found had PCIe 4x connectors.

I got this HBA card with a commonly used ASMedia controller.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Y1NRHX3

No performance or stability issues so far.

Exactly what I was looking for, thank you!

[Efficient_Good_5784]

Just keep in mind that with pcie x1 slots, you'll be limited in data bandwidth. Assuming it's pcie 3.0, that means a max of ~8Gbps. Enough for 3 HDDs to run at their fastest speeds at once without bottlenecking. Adding more than that will just mean the drives will have to share the bandwidth.

I'm using Truenas, so an HBA flashed to IT mode is the recommended setup in my case. I bought mine (flashed to IT mode) from this seller on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_dkr=1&i...1&_nkw=hba

[bitmap]

Yeah, I was looking at the specs for what TDP linked and it does say there's a limit of 8 Gbps. That same listing also has an NVMe SATA card, but I couldn't find anything about speed on ANY of the listings I looked at. Most reviews are around average, with some of the cheap crap causing issues or failing early.

[TheDreadPirate]

I have also seen some NVMe SATA expanders, which are alluring, however my OS drive is a 1 TB Samsung 980 Pro and the other NVMe slot is labeled in the specs as "CPU" which...I don't understand. I also have zero idea whether these expansion cards are too good to be true.

I want to circle back to this for a quick explanation.  Consumer CPUs only have enough PCIe lanes to directly attach one NVMe drive to the CPU.  As in no middle man.  The second NVMe slot on your board goes through the chipset and shares bandwidth with all the other connected devices.  Like USB, SATA, audio, etc.

The "CPU" NVMe slot is usually on the board between the CPU socket and first PCIe 16x slot.  Practically speaking you are almost certainly not going to notice a difference for normal usage.  If your main NVMe SSD is currently in the lower slot that goes through the chipset you should move it to the upper slot.

Going back to the HBA card, if you do choose to go with the M.2 to SATA route, make sure it is an M keyed adapter and not a B keyed adapter.  What's the difference?  M keyed means it is a true PCIe to SATA bridge.  B keyed means the M.2 slot is acting as a single SATA interface that is being split, aka all the drives share a single SATA interface's bandwidth.

Here is a M keyed M.2 to SATA adapter.

https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-SATA3-0-N...B0B5RJHYFD

This one says it is PCIe 2x. Which shouldn't be a problem. It wouldn't matter anyway since most secondary NVMe slots are 2x anyway.

[bitmap]

I have also seen some NVMe SATA expanders, which are alluring, however my OS drive is a 1 TB Samsung 980 Pro and the other NVMe slot is labeled in the specs as "CPU" which...I don't understand. I also have zero idea whether these expansion cards are too good to be true.

I want to circle back to this for a quick explanation.  Consumer CPUs only have enough PCIe lanes to directly attach one NVMe drive to the CPU.  As in no middle man.  The second NVMe slot on your board goes through the chipset and shares bandwidth with all the other connected devices.  Like USB, SATA, audio, etc.

The "CPU" NVMe slot is usually on the board between the CPU socket and first PCIe 16x slot.  Practically speaking you are almost certainly not going to notice a difference for normal usage.  If your main NVMe SSD is currently in the lower slot that goes through the chipset you should move it to the upper slot.

Going back to the HBA card, if you do choose to go with the M.2 to SATA route, make sure it is an M keyed adapter and not a B keyed adapter.  What's the difference?  M keyed means it is a true PCIe to SATA bridge.  B keyed means the M.2 slot is acting as a single SATA interface that is being split, aka all the drives share a single SATA interface's bandwidth.

Here is a M keyed M.2 to SATA adapter.

https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-SATA3-0-N...B0B5RJHYFD

This one says it is PCIe 2x.  Which shouldn't be a problem.  It wouldn't matter anyway since most secondary NVMe slots are 2x anyway.

Really appreciate the explanation. Are there performance disadvantages to going the NVMe route? Seems like possible greater throughput but unknown/unproven tech. Whereas the PCIe x1 card is proven, but limited based on the PCI slots available. I'm essentially pulling all the guts out for this new case, so I have plenty of time to get things correct...