The 10 Best HDD Expansion cards (2023 reviews)

We consider a hdd expansion card to be a worthy investment in the long run. We are here to help you choose the right one for your needs from all the best available products in market today.

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Our Top Picks:

Best Overall: Buy: Ziyituod HDD Expansion Card READ REVIEW

Best With Linux: Buy: IO Crest HDD Expansion Card READ REVIEW

Best With Windows: Buy: Startech HDD Expansion Card READ REVIEW

Best With Sata: Buy: Mhqjrh HDD Expansion Card READ REVIEW

Best Adapter: Buy: ACTIMED HDD Expansion Card READ REVIEW

Best For Server: Buy: Godshark HDD Expansion Card READ REVIEW

Best For Sata Hard Drive: Buy: FUQUXSTR HDD Expansion Card READ REVIEW

Best For older Systems: Buy: Xtremeamazing HDD Expansion Card READ REVIEW

Best For Unraid: Buy: Trotwei Blue HDD Expansion Card READ REVIEW

Best For freenas: Buy: Btbcoin HDD Expansion Card READ REVIEW

Best Overall: Ziyituod HDD Expansion Card

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Ziyituod line of card come in a pretty wide variety of styles, so you can definitely find one that suits your individual preferences and needs. The installation of this Ziyituod PCIe SATA Card, 4 Port is a breeze and works plug and play. It allows 4 sata devices at the speed up to 6gbps. The SATA hard drives are limited to around around 500 MB/sec and the ASMedia 1064 can easily run at those speeds so anything more seems like overkill. The card they put in the box with a QR code leads you to a website all in Chinese for a wifi router and there's no clear way to search for the driver on the site.

This is a PCI Express card and needs to be installed in a PCIe slot. It comes with screwdriver and slot blank and data cables. It fits in a normal profile case or low profile case.

• Easy install and worked 'plug and play' as a secondary card
• Works great with no problems during installation or otherwise using win
• Plug and play, easy to install and worked like a charm
• All cables included to connect sata devices

Best With Linux: IO Crest HDD Expansion Card

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The io crest hdd expansion card is the best reliable card on the market today. This card is a rock solid pcie x1 gen 3 card. It allows support of four sata devices at speeds of up to 6gb/s whether it is a sata hard drive or sata device. It works with linux, and it does indeed have two ports. It is used for system backups. It is totally random, and it changes at random if you add, remove or change any drives.

This card supports uEFI and BIOS bootable. It is an easier and cheaper solution. The ASMedia controller has no heat sink and generates no heat. It supports port multiplier fis based switching or command based switching.

• Msi z390 gaming edge configured in raid mode
• 2 extra sata port for sata devices
• Delivers what they promise

Best With Windows: Startech HDD Expansion Card

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Startech line of card come in a pretty wide variety of styles, so you can definitely find one that suits your individual preferences and needs. It should work on any motherboard with a Sata III cannel and an open PCI Express slot. It features 2x mini-sas connections with mini-sas to 4x locking sata adapter cables incl. The board works great and has significantly improved the disk performance of an older PC being used as a NAS. It comes with two pigtails that plug into the two mini-sas ports.

The 8p6g-pcie-sata-cARD does support hot-plugging drives. It takes only seconds but requires re-boot. The controller is recognized by Windows 7 and works fine with the standard Windows 7 Drivers. It is compatible with the build in raid controller.

• Strong performer and easy to install
• Treats drives attached as removable, not internals
• Down side, makes it hard to route cables to far from the card
• Good addition to add sata 3 ports to older systems

Best With Sata: Mhqjrh HDD Expansion Card

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If you often find yourself confused about convenient and suitable card, mhqjrh hdd expansion card should be your first option for buying. This PC only has SATA 2 and PCIe 2.0 capabilities built in. It will give bootable, sata 3 drive speeds to a decade-old pc. As the picture shows, the adapter comes assembled with a regular height bracket and includes an optional short bracket. It will fit in any pcie slot.

The SATA III 4 Ports can support 4 SATA 3.0 at the same time, and can achieve transmission speeds up to 6.0Gbps*. This card is easy to install. It is compatible with sata 2.0 and sata 1.

• Useful to convert old motherboards in excellent nas boxes
• Able to connect multiple hard drives
• Excellent upgrade for pc towers that don't have card readers

Best Adapter: ACTIMED HDD Expansion Card

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Actimed is known for creating pragmatic and minimalist card for people on the go, and its line of actimed hdd expansion card definitely falls in line with that reputation. It works flawlessly in Windows 10 64 and Xtra M2 card stays nice and cool with the large heat sync that comes with the card. It is designed to ensure the pcie sata expansion card maximizes performance while maintaining this card always in the best condition. It supports a single-sided and double-sided NVME SSD. It also comes with both the standard and the shorter mounting bracket for a SFF case.

It works great, easy to install. It is perfectly after reboot, without any need to hunt down and install os drivers. It is a very well built item and has a really nice heat sink that comes with it.

• Good for gaming and virtual instances, etc
• Reliable controller for linux mdadm array of 4kn drives
• Works perfectly on insertion and reboot

Best For Server: Godshark HDD Expansion Card

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Not everyone likes to purchase card for their regular usage, but the godshark hdd expansion card would be an anomoly. It is a great upgrade card for older motherboards that won’t have the 6 GB ssd spades. It boots to the bio screen then to the raid controller and then pauses and boots. The card comes with an optional raid utility which lets you configure a raid 0 raid 1 or raid 0+1 setup on two or more of the sata ports.

• Accomplishes the goal of having additional sata ports
• Good investment for long term

Best For Sata Hard Drive: FUQUXSTR HDD Expansion Card

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Fuquxstr is known for creating pragmatic and minimalist card for people on the go, and its line of fuquxstr hdd expansion card definitely falls in line with that reputation. PCIe 2 SATA 3.0 ports controller card offers a simpleconnection between a host computer and SATA 3.0 devices(SATA hard drive or SATAdevice), which allows 2 SATA devices at the speed up to 6Gb/s. It is widely supported across all popular operating system platforms including winxp/ win7/ win8 /win10/ linux/mac pros /macos. It allows 2 sata devices at the speed up to 6gb/s.

Aluminum alloy-Groove design, greatly increase the heat dissipation area with good thermal conductivity ability, designed to maximize cooling performance.

• Supports partial and slumber power management states
• Maximize your efficiency and offers more stable with asm1061 chip
• Simple installation, plug and play, no driver installation required.support hot swap
• Supports error reporting, recovery, and correction

Best For older Systems: Xtremeamazing HDD Expansion Card

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We would, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention xtremeamazing hdd expansion card for regular usage. It is good for older systems. The system has a PCI port lying empty for a while. The card comes with an optional raid utility which lets you configure a raid 0 raid 1 or raid 0+1 setup on two or more of the sata ports. The unit comes with a driver's CD.

• Good brand reputation
• One of the new comers and featured product

Best For Unraid: Trotwei Blue HDD Expansion Card

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We would, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention trotwei blue hdd expansion card for daily purpose. The PCI-E interface x1 uses immersed gold technology with thickened gold-plated gold fingers, better contact, easy data transmission, effectively reduce packet loss rate, and is compatible with PCI-e x1, x4, x8, x16 slots. It only supports 2 sata ports without windows drivers installed. This expansion card can support connecting 10 large. It works in Ubuntu 20.04 plus works with optical (dvd) drives. It has capacity SATA storage devices to use at the same time, and the SATA 3.0 interface speed can reach up to 6Gbps.

• One of the new comers and featured product
• Lot of satisfied buyers

Best For freenas: Btbcoin HDD Expansion Card

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Best part: btbcoin hdd expansion card costs comparatively low and it is available to ship in 24 hours. This PCI sata expansion card can be expanded to 6 sata 3.0 6gbps ports via pcie x4 x8 x16 slots. The Powerful chip ASM1166 was adopted in this SATA sata expansion card, it makes the SATA card more stable and compatible, supports each SATA 3.0 port transfer rate up to 6Gbps for AHCI boot and storage. It comes with a low profile bracket and 6 sata cables, compatible with 99% size chassis on the market.

• Drivers needed, easy to install, plug and play
• Support native command queuing (ncq).support ssc for both pcie and sata
• Lot of satisfied buyers