# Internal USB to SATA adaptor



## Lazzer408 (Feb 28, 2011)

Has anyone ever seen an adaptor that can be connected to a motherboard's USB header to support a SATA hard drive?

Long story short I'm out of SATA ports.  I was thinking of maybe modding something like this.
http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-0-SATA-Ad...044?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a0e6a5cdc

I could unsolder the USB port and solder on a 6" or so cable with a 4-pin connector to fit the mobo.  It would be easier to just buy one if I knew where to find things like that.


----------



## Completely Bonkers (Feb 28, 2011)

Before you go any further, are you aware that the HDD mounted through such a USB device will be significantly slower than a native SATA. If you are out of ports, I would recommend getting a PCI or PCIe SATA controller. At least your HDDs will run at full speed, and you can have write cache. Whereas, write cache over USB is not the way to go.  And with an "external USB device" autoplay will kick in and antivirus will scan it on every boot (default settings).


----------



## Lazzer408 (Feb 28, 2011)

Completely Bonkers said:


> Before you go any further, are you aware that the HDD mounted through such a USB device will be significantly slower than a native SATA. If you are out of ports, I would recommend getting a PCI or PCIe SATA controller. At least your HDDs will run at full speed, and you can have write cache. Whereas, write cache over USB is not the way to go.  And with an "external USB device" autoplay will kick in and antivirus will scan it on every boot (default settings).



Yes I know.  It's a mini ITX chassis and the board only has 2 SATA ports one x16 slot that has a videocard in it.  The DVD and HDD are both SATA.  I put an SSD drive in it for the OS and the extra SATA port would be for holding media.  I've never had any problems playing movies off a USB drive so I figured it's my only solution.  It's prettier to stuff it inside then an external enclosure would be.


----------



## newtekie1 (Feb 28, 2011)

It might not be as pretty as soldering and all that, but why not just grab one of these with the USB to SATA adapter you were looking at?

StarTech USBMBADAPT 6" USB A Female to USB Motherb...


----------



## Jstn7477 (Feb 28, 2011)

newtekie1 said:


> It might not be as pretty as soldering and all that, but why not just grab one of these with the USB to SATA adapter you were looking at?
> 
> StarTech USBMBADAPT 6" USB A Female to USB Motherb...



Great suggestion. Either that or if your board has an eSATA port, you could try to loop the cable back onto the case using an eSATA to SATA cable.


----------



## Lazzer408 (Feb 28, 2011)

newtekie1 said:


> It might not be as pretty as soldering and all that, but why not just grab one of these with the USB to SATA adapter you were looking at?
> 
> StarTech USBMBADAPT 6" USB A Female to USB Motherb...



Thats close but for $9 I'll solder it. 



Jstn7477 said:


> Great suggestion. Either that or if your board has an eSATA port, you could try to loop the cable back onto the case using an eSATA to SATA cable.



Yes I just checked and it DOES have an esata port. I forgot all about that. Who's going to see it back there right?


----------



## Geofrancis (Mar 13, 2011)

i am going to do the same idea as you for my itx server. i have 2 onboard sata plus a 4 port pci-e controller but i need more. i have already got the internaly mounted laptop dvd-rw running into the usb and all my data goes over 100mbit ethernet so aslong as you are not in a hurry to copy a few Tb's of data usb is fine.

i couldnt find an esata cable that would sit nice. it always looked a but ugly.


----------

