Hi

I soon need to extend available HDD, and it's for a daw so I don't think USB drives would be good enough.

I have two drives now, each with it's own SATA connector to MB.
No more of them on MB.

Are there Y-cables for SATA to add another drive?
I have power connector and a free bay for the drive as such.

Are there any penalties doing this?

It's a Dell Vostro with i7-860 MB.

Thanks.

No, I've seen SATA power splitters but the data cable can't just be split like this.

Any firewire ports available if USB is too slow for you?

Apparently there are SATA hubs. Never used one so can't recommend any. Let us know if you get one and how it works for you.

And of course, if you have the space and a slot available, you could get a SATA controller card. That would be preferred as I assume a SATA hub reduces performance.

Get a PCIe SATA card. If you stream audio (samples or audio tracks in a DAW) off this drive you might find it puts clicks on your low latency audio. If the additional drive is just for backup and archiving then USB 2or 3 would be adequate. Are you sure you don't have an eSATA port on that machine? It would be on the back of the case - perfect way to add a fast additional drive.

Thanks for your response, everybody.

I think there is one connector on MB next to the one for cd-drive, but I gather that is another technology.

I switched graphics card recently, and I got one that is silent but occupies two slots, and my only PCI Express x1 is occupied kind of.

I have not made benchmarks with the external USB 2.0 drive on this machine, but my old XP and it delivers about 150Mbit/s. That drive is 2T, so it would last. I think I will benchmark internal drives compared to external and see if it might do the job after all. I don't run audio on USB so it should be free to use for highspeed HDD stuff.

A "hub" will, of course, have to share the data bandwidth between the two drives. Could be a concern.

Good point.

I look at present drives if there were any sign of daisy chain outputs from drives etc - like firewire often has - but did not find any.

I will do some benchmarking and copy a couple of gigs from one drive to another and see what speed I get - compared to external USB drive.

EDIT: Did check performance of copy, and internal drives are 5 times faster than USB drive I have.

Maybe look for a USB3 PCIe card + HDD combo deal?

Only 2 SATA ports on motherboard?


Motherboard is crap, then. Screw the motherboard without at least 4 (preferably 6 or more) SATA ports.

I think it's cheaper to throw one HDD out and replace with a bigger one. My graphics card occupies two slots since it's silent without fans, and that slot is the only short ePCI left. The long one is for graphics card.

Thanks anyway.

It's two years old now my Dell Vostro i7-860. I didn't think of asking about that at the time.

One lives and learn....