Question So lost about what's needed for 8 HDDs (SATA cables/SATA power/splitter?)

[takearushfan82]

Hi all. My roommate asked me to build a new PC for him and, though I built mine and his last one, I'm so lost about this new one. It's going to be using 8 HDDs (nuts, I know). So, besides the 8 SATA cables, I also need 8 separate SATA power cables, right? Or do you use some sort of splitter to share power among them? Might someone have some screenshots or preferably links? I'm really worried I'll have no idea what I'm doing. I'm only used to one HDD, not freakin' 8. I'm kinda overwhelmed as to what to buy and how to connect it all. Sorry for the amateur question.

 

[USAFRet]

1. Why 8, specifically?
2. My current system has 6x drives. 2x NVMe and 4x SATA III. All solid state.

SATA data connects to the motherboard.
SATA power comes off the PSU.

But why that many drives, especially HDD?

 

[takearushfan82]

1. Why 8, specifically?
2. My current system has 6x drives. 2x NVMe and 4x SATA III. All solid state.

SATA data connects to the motherboard.
SATA power comes off the PSU.

But why that many drives, especially HDD?

Oh, I meant 7 (still overkill) plus the bluray. He's a TV and movie hoarder with hardly any compression. So all 8 sata cables go from each drive to the mobo and a Single power supply from the PSU goes to all 8 as a chain or something or do I need 8 different power cables to each drive? Would the psu even have 8 sata power cables? That's part of what I'm confused by.

 

[USAFRet]

Get him one of these:

Amazon.com

 

[takearushfan82]

Get him one of these:

Amazon.com

Unfortunately every single part is already like a day away from arriving. I briefly looked on Google and it sounds like most PSUs come with enough sata power connectors, like 4 per two separate cords or something like that? I can't get the model info from him because he's not home but I know it's a 1000w psu so that should have enough power connectors, right?

 

[USAFRet]

Unfortunately every single part is already like a day away from arriving. I briefly looked on Google and it sounds like most PSUs come with enough sata power connectors, like 4 per two separate cords or something like that? I can't get the model info from him because he's not home but I know it's a 1000w psu so that should have enough power connectors, right?

So what is the full parts list?
Make/model of everything.

 

[takearushfan82]

So what is the full parts list?
Make/model of everything.

Crud. I have to wait for him to get home. I don't have it. I made the mistake of removing it from pcpartpicker after sending him the links to all the parts to order. Everything is in his personal Amazon, newegg and western digital order histories. I was also concerned about a few other things but I looked and all should be well, ie the cpu fan does have the paste and mounting parts and the mobo does have the backplate etc

 

[takearushfan82]

So what is the full parts list?
Make/model of everything.

These are the things that I always seem to forget because I falsely assume they'll be included. If one spends into the thousands for 7 different 18tb drives you'd think they'd include the sata cables but noooo

 

[takearushfan82]

So what is the full parts list?
Make/model of everything.

Oh, and before he possibly gets the wrong ones, which length sata cables would you recommend? The 1.5 is probably necessary for that many drives right? Though cable management will be a pain.

 

[USAFRet]

7x 18TB rives.

What is the OS drive going to be?
Not one of those, I hope.

What is the plan for a backup of all this data?

 

[takearushfan82]

7x 18TB rives.

What is the OS drive going to be?
Not one of those, I hope.

What is the plan for a backup of all this data?

Win 11 Pro. He has a crapload of externals with everything on it. I warned him but, yeah, I know all about that, the risks of loss, etc lol
It would be one of those drives, yep. Would 1.5 cables work?

7x 18TB rives.

What is the OS drive going to be?
Not one of those, I hope.

What is the plan for a backup of all this data?

I meant the length that is

 

[SkyNetRising]

Would 1.5 cables work?
I meant the length that is

Depends on specific pc case model.
Usually even in full tower case 70cm cables is plenty.

 

[DSzymborski]

Yeah, we really need to know all the hardware. For one, a lot of motherboards, even when they have eight SATA ports, don't necessarily support *all* eight SATA ports when some other resource is being used. Flying blind with this kind of thing is never a good idea.

 

[takearushfan82]

Depends on specific pc case model.
Usually even in full tower case 70cm cables is plenty.

It's a full tower
This is infuriating though...
I'm trying to find a 4 or 8 pack of straight SATA cables but can't. To make it worse, I don't know which length to get to ensure a proper balance between not too short to reach each component but not too long to be a mess/excessive. If you had a full tower and 8 internal drives, what length would you choose specifically? It's an ATX, ASRock Z790 Pro RS Wifi. I'm sorry to be such a pain. I guess I'll have to have him buy a 5 pack and a 3 pack or such, as I don't see 4 or 8. I also need to be definitive about the length first too. I'm trying Amazon, as they tend to ship really fast.

 

[Mr.Vegas]

Most modern motherboards have 4 sata ports, or 6 ports with 2 "degenerate" ports, using old PCIE x1 gen 2 ASSmedia chip [most MSI boards like this]
ASROCK has some 8 sata ports boards that use Intel SATA, i use one for my unRAID.

Listen, im also a hoarder, i had more HDDs than actual letters for them in windows 11, eventually i decided that its far cheaper, easier to build 2 PCs, one using huge case that has many HDD slots, but economical CPU [ i have 12700 non K with E cores disabled in BIOS] and install unRAID os, its easy to use OS, 120USD lifetime license.

Its OS for data hoarders, and it allows you dedicate Parity drives to protect your data, to be simple about this, i have 20 HDDs, some 14Tb some 16Tb, and 2 parity HDDS, meaning i have 2 drive fails, each parity disk equals one drive fail you can have, you can have as little as 1 parity or as many as you want, people usually use 2.

Its not a RAID system thats why its called unRAID, each disk is by itself, there is no speed boost from parity.
But the OS is for sharing and managing files.
You can have SATA/NVMe SSDs drives set as cache, so when you copy something to unRAID it copies to SSD and then automatically on timer it copies to the HDD share, for you its invisible and you get the benefit of SSD speed.

If your friend is not a heavy gamer, you can uild him a second system using one of those tiny cases or buy a minipc for day to day usage browsing, if hes a gamer then build him a small ATX build, asrock has prebuilds with case, mobo and PSU, all you need is CPU, RAM and video card

My PC and unRAID connected with 10Gb internet, so for me accessing data on unraid feels the same as if the data was local, also you can stream directly from unraid

 

[dwd999]

If I had that much stuff, I would probably install a removable hard drive bay in my case and swap out drives as needed. I don't think its a great idea to have 7 drives constantly running; I wouldn't be watching that much stuff that I would need more than 1 drive per day.

 

[takearushfan82]

If I had that much stuff, I would probably install a removable hard drive bay in my case and swap out drives as needed. I don't think its a great idea to have 7 drives constantly running; I wouldn't be watching that much stuff that I would need more than 1 drive per day.

What length cables would you get in my situation? 3feet, 1foot, etc? I don't want it to be too messy, as even in a full tower that's 8 freaking cables but don't want them to be too short to reach everything.

 

[takearushfan82]

Most modern motherboards have 4 sata ports, or 6 ports with 2 "degenerate" ports, using old PCIE x1 gen 2 ASSmedia chip [most MSI boards like this]
ASROCK has some 8 sata ports boards that use Intel SATA, i use one for my unRAID.

Listen, im also a hoarder, i had more HDDs than actual letters for them in windows 11, eventually i decided that its far cheaper, easier to build 2 PCs, one using huge case that has many HDD slots, but economical CPU [ i have 12700 non K with E cores disabled in BIOS] and install unRAID os, its easy to use OS, 120USD lifetime license.

Its OS for data hoarders, and it allows you dedicate Parity drives to protect your data, to be simple about this, i have 20 HDDs, some 14Tb some 16Tb, and 2 parity HDDS, meaning i have 2 drive fails, each parity disk equals one drive fail you can have, you can have as little as 1 parity or as many as you want, people usually use 2.

Its not a RAID system thats why its called unRAID, each disk is by itself, there is no speed boost from parity.
But the OS is for sharing and managing files.
You can have SATA/NVMe SSDs drives set as cache, so when you copy something to unRAID it copies to SSD and then automatically on timer it copies to the HDD share, for you its invisible and you get the benefit of SSD speed.

If your friend is not a heavy gamer, you can uild him a second system using one of those tiny cases or buy a minipc for day to day usage browsing, if hes a gamer then build him a small ATX build, asrock has prebuilds with case, mobo and PSU, all you need is CPU, RAM and video card

My PC and unRAID connected with 10Gb internet, so for me accessing data on unraid feels the same as if the data was local, also you can stream directly from unraid

Unfortunately all the parts other than the sata cables will arrive in a few days. Some already came. He's not willing to shell out anymore dough on another pc after this one. I'm just trying to find out what length sata cables are ideal for a full tower even you need 8 for 8 different drives. What length would you choose?

 

[takearushfan82]

Yeah, we really need to know all the hardware. For one, a lot of motherboards, even when they have eight SATA ports, don't necessarily support *all* eight SATA ports when some other resource is being used. Flying blind with this kind of thing is never a good idea.

Oh no! He'll sh-t himself if all can't be used simultaneously. It's an asrock z790 pro rs wifi, i9 12th gen, 32 ddr5 ram, 8 22tb hdd, full tower, 1000w psu, rtx 3050, ... I'm not sure the actual further specifics until he's back home.

 

[dwd999]

Unfortunately all the parts other than the sata cables will arrive in a few days. Some already came. He's not willing to shell out anymore dough on another pc after this one. I'm just trying to find out what length sata cables are ideal for a full tower even you need 8 for 8 different drives. What length would you choose?

I think cables in the 18 to 20 inch range should be adequate since the motherboard connectors should be towards the middle of the case.

 

[takearushfan82]

I think cables in the 18 to 20 inch range should be adequate since the motherboard connectors should be towards the middle of the case.

Oh, so the 1.6 foot I was looking at way earlier would work, if it were 8 per pack rather than 5. I'll have to just get a two 4 packs or such. Thanks so much

 

[USAFRet]

Oh no! He'll sh-t himself if all can't be used simultaneously. It's an asrock z790 pro rs wifi, i9 12th gen, 32 ddr5 ram, 8 22tb hdd, full tower, 1000w psu, rtx 3050, ... I'm not sure the actual further specifics until he's back home.

All that hotrod hardware, and a spinning 18TB hard drive as the OS.

While there are probably worse configurations, I'm struggling to think of one.

 

[Math Geek]

there is zero info about how the lanes are split up. so you're just going to have to hook it all up and see what happens. if only a single pcie slot is used for a gpu and no m.2 drives are used, then you are likely to be able to use all 8 sata ports (likely but not guaranteed as i said there is zero info about this. just my educated guess). but if you start installing m.2 drives or trying to use any of the other pcie slots, then it's going to be a case of "try it and see what happens". most of the time, using any of these slots sacrifices sata ports. don't think i have ever seen a mobo that did not have some compromises somewhere.

as a side note: since i can pretty much guess where all these movies are coming from, i sure hope he plans on some serious back-ups of important data. won't take but one "oops shouldn't have downloaded that", to destroy all that data as well as the windows install and anything else connected to the pc. no amount of hopeful wishing is going to bring it all back once whatever might infect the pc does its thing. the only answer is "blow it ALL away and start over. all 8 drives!!"

 

[Mr.Vegas]

Unfortunately all the parts other than the sata cables will arrive in a few days. Some already came. He's not willing to shell out anymore dough on another pc after this one. I'm just trying to find out what length sata cables are ideal for a full tower even you need 8 for 8 different drives. What length would you choose?

Its better to get angled cables for ease of use that point from HDD towards the mobo, i buy them on aliexpress, but if you dont have time, get whataver you can find on amazon, cable lenth is standrt more or less , usually they always longer then what you need.

ASROCK has 2Gb/s bandwidth for the 8 ports, at least mine does, its more then enough for all HDDS.
Also the friend that said you cant use them together didn't mean you CANT use them, its that if bandwidth is shared when you use them together the speed drops, thats it, but you can use them all at the same time.

But modern HDDs are 250MB/s so x8 thats exactly 2Gb/s to use them at same time.

 

[USAFRet]

Its better to get angled cables for ease of use that point from HDD towards the mobo,

No, its better to get ones that actually fit the case and port locations.

Some, a left facing angle
Some, a right facing angle
Some, straight through

Some cases and locations, a combination of all 3.

There is no single best.