What's taking up most of my SATA ports on MOBO?

[Crate Mayne]

I bought a new hard drive with plans to make it the 3rd drive in the system, and while opening up my case to check things out I found myself stumped...

My mobo has 6 spots available for Sata cables, yet I see 5 are already used, and I'm not quite sure how.

I had bought a pc from cyberpower, so it's a prebuilt one. I have an ssd and hd already in it, and a blu ray disc drive... So that would account for 3 of the connections, but what else would?

I surely dont see any free cables hanging like I do for the power supply connections, so I'd have to assume the other 2 are also in use.

Besides the 3 things mentioned above the computer also has a 12 in 1 internal card reader, 3d card, wireless internet card, and one of those extra usb 3.0 bays. And unless I'm mistaken those should only use either PCI or USB connections to the mobo.

What am I missing? Any help is appreciated!

 

[i7Baby]

You'd need to list every component in your PC. Or trace the cables to find where they go.

 

[USAFRet]

We can't know how CyberPower built it. Where do those cables go?

 

[pauls3743]

Are there any eSATA ports on your front panel?

Or eSATA ports on an expansion card at the rear on your PC?

 

[Crate Mayne]

Thanks guys, should have realized it was mostly up to me to find the issue, but much appreciated regardless.

It had the professional wiring done, so tracing is a bit of a pain since I can't freely isolate cables, and then coupled with all the hidden compartments the case provided. But I did completely forget about the fact that the case had one of those HDD hot swap bays, so that at least allows me to account for 4 of the 5 currently in use.... I'll keep trying to trace, but at this point I'm happy to have found the 4 at least. Highly doubt I'd ever use the hot swap so that makes for at least 2 free SATA ports to use in the future.

 

[pauls3743]

I would still check the front panel for an ESATA port as this will use the other SATA port.

 

[Crate Mayne]

I would still check the front panel for an ESATA port as this will use the other SATA port.

That at least I'm sure of the computer not having on the front panel. There is 2 for the the back, but that is straight off the mobo, so no cable required at least... I'll find that last one at some point haha, thanks though Pauls!