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General Discussions

HBA support

I guess AMD is just as bad as Intel is for host bus (HBA) support. 

Plugging in my SATA port multiplier into my X570 as expected was not recognized. X570 evidently is not compliant with the SATA standard.

I install a cheap Marvell SATA card, connect the SATA port multiplier and it works. So this tells me AMD/Intel are taking steps to prevent people from installing more hard disks.

 

Marvell's literature on their logic shows full support. So this means AMD is not compliant.

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4 Replies
leyvin
Miniboss

It typically depends on the AIB Partner and the existing number of SATA Ports on the Board.

For example., my B350 Board doesn't support a SATA Port "Multiplier" at least in a Default Configuration because it already has the Maximum Port Count built-in (8x SATA + 2x M.2) which all use the same Express 3.0 x4 Host Root.

(If you're curious that the equivalent of 16 Total SATA Ports., which is the Maximum Per Controller) 

In essence if you want more than you either need another Controller., or alternatively use a BIOS that is configured specifically for Port Switching (as you can have up to 16 SATA Ports Sharing a Single Port., at the cost of Shared Bandwidth) … but said BIOS are typically only on Server Boards. 

And that makes sense., because who the heck NEEDS more than 8 Ports today beyond NAS Servers?

There was a good argument for this say 10 years ago... when most boards only had 4x SATA with the Largest Drives being 2-4TB... but today you can get up to 16TB HDD, with built-in Redundancy.

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My chassis has room for a lot of disks and one of the boxes has room for 4 2.5" disks which can be popped out rapidly

I use the front panel box for disk to SSD copying etc

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So, your entire rationale is because you bought a case with a lot of HDD Install Options … like for Customisation Purposes., rather than for the rationale of Consumers actually needing to use all of those bays.

I'm not really sure what you're doing that could possibly mean you need more than 8x SATA at once, on top of the 2x M.2 that wouldn't be better served with 1 or more USB 3.x NAS Boxes. 

Network Array Storage (or even the Built-In SATA) will both have Hot-Swapping., while SPM doesn't support such without Manual / Automated Mounting and Unmounting... and again there is the situation where the more Drives on SPM will divide the SATA Bandwidth by the Attach Devices (each Device can go as low as 67MB/s., which is 'Low' Speed even compared to 1990s PATA Devices) while NAS / Native SATA will be capable of operating at the full 540MB/s Bandwidth.

And keep in mind from the sounds of it you're trying to copy from SATA (3?) to SSD... so that's already going to be 250MB/s Peak to 540MB/s Peak (i.e. 2:1) unless you're working with NVME Drives; in which case it'll be 250MB/s to 2.5 - 4.0GB/s. 

The main reason for an SPM, typically is where Performance isn't a concern but rather extreme redundancy is... like for example a Database Server that requires A LOT of Fall-Over Support for it's RAID to maintain a 99.99% Uptime, for Data Copying however; eh, using a PC rather than a NAS just doesn't make any sense. As most NAS today support Build-In Data Shadowing, without ever needing to connect it to a PC. 

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the bays in my front panel box are pop open so I can remove the disk and put in a new one

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