The 9 Best Sata Hard Drive Expansion cards (2023 reviews)

The latest ziyituod sata hard drive expansion card is an absolute beast in terms of its features, and rightfully takes the top spot with ease. This class of devices describes a generic system memory structure with control and status areas, command sequence entry tables. It allows 4 sata devices at the speed up to 6gbps. 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 card is very easy to install, and it works quite well. It's minimally sized, shows up in Linux, and provides full speed to at least 2 drives.

This is a PCI Express card and needs to be installed in a PCIe slot. It allows for either achi, ide, or non boot modes. It is easy to install, turn off pc, plug in card, reboot, connect and use usb devices.

Why We Like This:

All cables included to connect sata devices
Highly recommended for the best cooling in a case ever
Great little card to add sata ports
Nice, compact size and very easy to install

Best For adding More Drives: Jesot Sata Hard Drive Expansion Card

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Not everyone likes to purchase card for their daily purpose, but the jesot sata hard drive expansion card would be an anomoly. It's a PCI Express, Sata 3.0 card and plugs right into the PCI Express slot. It is used to add dual ssd drives in a sff case with a 3.5” expansion bay, and another in the optical bay. You could plug this in to a board that has no onboard sata slots and it provides it's own lanes through that bus. It's literally a command prompt that identified what hard drives are connected to the expansion cards.

This plugs into a PCI slot and will give you 4 SATA cables to use. This card performs well, no hesitation when reading or writing to your HDD. The raid software will ask you which drives to include when setting up your array. This is not a PCI Express, Sata 3.0 card and plugs right into the PCI Express slot.

Why We Like This:

Set up of software raid was also very easy during install of ubuntu server
Great value and impressed with the speed of the card
Powered up freenas and it all works perfectly

Best For Unraid: BEYIMEI Sata Hard Drive Expansion Card

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The beyimei sata hard drive expansion card's high-end materials makes sure that it ages well with use. It's a simple, effective product. It includes all the cables you need. It adds 6 sata ports to the system to expand to more drives. It will only see 4 hard drives at once, no more even if connected. It is used to be in external usb arrays. It is great for functionality out of the box. There is no safe eject option, and the power-on self-check is very fast. It comes with all the cables you need. They work 1000% better and no longer suffer random disconnects.

Why We Like This:

Works with z690 motherboards and windows
Delivers what they promise

Best With Windows: Startech Sata Hard Drive Expansion Card

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We know from years of feedback from readers, customers and amazon sellers, what most people want in a convenient and appropriate card. The startech sata hard drive expansion card is exactly that - it's a simple card that hits all the right notes. It features 2x mini-sas connections with mini-sas to 4x locking sata adapter cables incl. It can only handle two drives at a time. It comes with two pigtails that plug into the two mini-sas ports. It uses 2 lanes, for a max of 8gbit / sec. The SATA connectors have seven pins and the connectors on this board have 36 connections, more than enough to support four SATA devices each. It will work with any Window 10 version and will support upto 64TB HDD per port due to 48bits LBA. It is compatible with the build in raid controller. It takes only seconds but requires re-boot.

Why We Like This:

Supports sata port multiplier for additional ports
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

Best For Sata Hard Drive: Mhqjrh Sata Hard Drive Expansion Card

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We know from years of feedback from readers, customers and amazon sellers, what most people want in a convenient and appropriate card. The mhqjrh sata hard drive expansion card is exactly that - it's a simple card that hits all the right notes. The SATA III 4 Ports can support 4 SATA 3.0 at the same time, and can achieve transmission speeds up to 6.0Gbps**. It's running at a RAID5 with 8tb and preforms a hot swap without drive interruptions. It will fit in any pcie slot. It comes with a low profile bracket and 4 sata cable,compatible with 99% size chassis on the market. It is compatible with sata 2.0 and sata 1. It is easy to install and works without any problems. It will give bootable, sata 3 drive speeds to a decade-old pc. It is compatible with windows xp / 7 / 8 / 10 / mac / nas / linux os.

Why We Like This:

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

Best Adapter: Febsmart Sata Hard Drive Expansion Card

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The febsmart sata hard drive expansion card might be a relatively new release, but it's still nothing short of impressive this year. If you’re running out of sata connections, this is a good fit. It works well for software raid with some configuration. It is based on asmedia asm1166 pcie 3.0 to sata iii host controller, which will support plug and play on windows os, mac os, and linux kernel systems. It is designed on pcie 3.0 x1 interface, will provide 8gbps total bandwidth, and each sata 3.0 ports will get 6gbps max speed for connected hdds/ssds.

The 4 SATA cables it comes with work great, and it has an HDD activity LED. It will work with any SATA connected device.

Why We Like This:

A good four-port sata card for windows
Great way to add additional sata to your motherboard
Good brand reputation

Best For freenas: IO Crest Sata Hard Drive Expansion Card

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We would, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention io crest sata hard drive expansion card for daily usage. This is essentially a PCI-E based SATA controller that is just connected to a different physical port than it normally would so no, your BIOS wouldn't be aware of any drives attached to it. Since the IO CREST device is essentially an NVMe to SATA III converter it will support whatever protocol your motherboard's M.2 port is designed for. It's thin and flexes easily.

This takes two PCIe lanes. It's more or less plug and play. The sata slots are also only soldered in by their data connectors, making this product super delicate and 'once connected, never moved. This product needs a second revision with a thicker pcb, better solder joints, a chunky heatsink on the controller, and full use of the x4 pcie lanes.

Why We Like This:

Works great for adding additional sata devices
Plug and play, uses standard windows 10 drivers
New and hot release

Best With Linux kernel: Silverstone technology Sata Hard Drive Expansion Card

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Next on the list, we've got yet another card that manages to win our hearts. It's the silverstone technology sata hard drive expansion card and it's widely considered as one of the best convenient card you can buy. It comes with large graphics cards, mainstream motherboards often have most of their pcie slots blocked, so you can’t go the old sas card route, either. It has a jmicron jmb585 controller. It offers expansion of up to 5 sata gen3 ports, capable of reaching 1700mb/s. This means it'll easily handle all 5 SATA ports (SATA port's theoretical maximum is 6Gbps) running at full speed. They work great, plug and play, no issues at all.

The card's PCIe interface has a theoretical bandwidth of up to 16 GT/s which is equivalent to about 1024 Gbps. It is great with Linux kernel 6.x fedora 37, asrock z690m-itx/ax mother board, and intel i7 12700 cpu.

Why We Like This:

Fast enough for backups, media, home server, etc
Plug & play with no additional driver necessary
One of the new comers and featured product

Best quality Of material: FUQUXSTR Sata Hard Drive Expansion Card

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Not everyone likes to purchase card for their daily purpose, but the fuquxstr sata hard drive expansion card would be an anomoly. 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 compatible with windows xp / 7 / 8 / 10 / mac / nas / linux os. Its Aluminum alloy-Groove design, greatly increase the heat dissipation area with good thermal conductivity ability, designed to maximize cooling performance.

It is widely supported across all popular operating system platforms including winxp/ win7/ win8 /win10/ linux/mac pros /macos.

Why We Like This:

Supports the ssd/hd system boot disk
Simple installation, plug and play, no driver installation required.support hot swap
Supports partial and slumber power management states