5punk

'Noon chaps. As the title suggests, I would like to know if such a component exists to split the data connections of two SATA hard drives into one data hole. My brother has gone out and bought himself a new SATA drive for his pron. The problem is, he's already got a DVDRW and a hard drive using his motherboard's two SATA connections.

Any idea if there's a device that can split one connection between two drives?

Cheers loves.

Fairly sure they can't be split.

Best bet is to buy a PCI SATA card for more SATA connections.

I don't think it's as easy as that.

I know you can get controller cards which have multiple extra ports on though, would be worth asking Berk about that as I think he uses one.

Thanks folks. Berk, I pass this on to your fine (pfft) self.

IIRC, Berk uses something relatively expensive.

Sift through some reviews and aim for something that is from a decent enough brand and has a decent enough chipset, oh and is SATAII.

/not very helpful

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Yup, it's a no-go.

For this, I'd just buy something like This

However, you'll probably need to find a PCI one, because a motherboard with only 2 sata holes is probably* socket-A era (or ~2.4ghz P4) and pre-pci-e.

Amblin is also correct, hell, HDDs have a job saturating sata. you'll get an IDE dvd burner for about 16 quid, so that's another option.

*either that, or a dell

oh, you could just buy a USB enclosure for the new HDD, that'd probably run less than £25 too.

There are RAID controllers that run 4 SATA channels off one port, but they need special cables to split the channels and such. They're hideously expensive and not worth the money.

deject wrote:There are RAID controllers that run 4 SATA channels off one port, but they need special cables to split the channels and such. They're hideously expensive and not worth the money.

Hmmmmn

They do run off of one port on the controller, but it's most likely mini-SAS (or some other thing) and they're usually on fairly high end controllers, so not really worth considering in a machine like the one in question.

However, in a file server, they're well worth the money for the added reliability, not to mention they're the only way to hook 16+ sata drives up to a computer without doing something dumb.

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:oh, you could just buy a USB enclosure for the new HDD, that'd probably run less than £25 too.

Berk, if you weren't so hideous I'd kiss you. Thank you for this suggestion, USB SATA enclosures start at £14.10 from Novatech. Thank you sir!

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:
Hmmmmn

They do run off of one port on the controller, but it's most likely mini-SAS (or some other thing) and they're usually on fairly high end controllers, so not really worth considering in a machine like the one in question.

However, in a file server, they're well worth the money for the added reliability, not to mention they're the only way to hook 16+ sata drives up to a computer without doing something dumb.

yes. all of this.