SATA splitter?

[nobody5000]

My motherboard has 2 SATA connectors, and I'm looking to add a 3rd SATA HDD to my system. Is there such thing as a SATA splitter that will allow 2 drives on 1 connector?

[kumquat]

My motherboard has 2 SATA connectors, and I'm looking to add a 3rd SATA HDD to my system. Is there such thing as a SATA splitter that will allow 2 drives on 1 connector?
No.

Make the 3rd hard drive PATA or buy a cheapo SATA PCI card.

[Madwand]

You might look into SATA port multipliers. However, the odds are, due to pricing and compatibility issues, that you may be better off getting a simple add-on PCI or PCIe controller.

[movax]

My motherboard has 2 SATA connectors, and I'm looking to add a 3rd SATA HDD to my system. Is there such thing as a SATA splitter that will allow 2 drives on 1 connector?
Nope. Serial ATA. Each device gets its own channel, its the nature of the standard, and the primary difference between Parallel ATA. Get a cheap 2 or 4 port PCI/e card off newegg, or a RAID card if you're feeling [H] and wanna try RAID.

[unhappy_mage]

Nope. Serial ATA. Each device gets its own channel, its the nature of the standard, and the primary difference between Parallel ATA. Get a cheap 2 or 4 port PCI/e card off newegg, or a RAID card if you're feeling [H] and wanna try RAID.
The reason sata is one-to-one isn't because it's serial - there are lots of serial buses that allow more than one device (USB, i2c, etc). Serial just means you're sending one bit at a time, rather than trying to push many bits across many pairs of wires at a time.

[defakto]

Nope. Serial ATA. Each device gets its own channel, its the nature of the standard, and the primary difference between Parallel ATA. Get a cheap 2 or 4 port PCI/e card off newegg, or a RAID card if you're feeling [H] and wanna try RAID.

Also, sata 2 supports the addition of port multipliers which allow multiple drives per controller port. The main problem is still compatability though, as was mentioned above. the serial has nothing to do with it as was also mentioned above.

[stevewm]

Be warned with port multipliers.... Although they are part of the SATA 2 standard. Not all SATA 2 controllers actually support them. Namely all of Nvidia's SATA 2 controllers.

However, most of the cheap SATA2 PCI/PCIExpress add-on cards DO support port multipliers.