M.2 to sata expansion possible?

[prateekprakash]

I use MSI b250i, which has all 4 native SATA ports occupied currently. I intend to connect more hard drives but I can't.

I was wondering, is it possible to connect the m.2 on the back of the board to branch out into say, 4x SATA ports? I couldn't find the exact terminology to search on Google, so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Fyi the pcie slot has GPU connected to it, so I cannot spare it for a raid card.

 

[Fardringle]

Something like this would let you connect one SATA drive to the m.2 port on the motherboard, but I haven't seen anything that will allow more than one SATA drive to share the m.2 port. It is theoretically possible, but nobody seems to be making one (yet). Also, the motherboard specs say that if you plug anything into that M.2 slot, the SATA1 port will be disabled so you aren't really gaining an additional drive that way...

If you really need more drives and cannot add a proper expansion card since the board only has one PCIe slot, it sounds like an external NAS enclosure would be your best option.

 

[prateekprakash]

Th

Something like this would let you connect one SATA drive to the m.2 port on the motherboard, but I haven't seen anything that will allow more than one SATA drive to share the m.2 port. It is theoretically possible, but nobody seems to be making one (yet). Also, the motherboard specs say that if you plug anything into that M.2 slot, the SATA1 port will be disabled so you aren't really gaining an additional drive that way...

If you really need more drives and cannot add a proper expansion card since the board only has one PCIe slot, it sounds like an external NAS enclosure would be your best option.

Thanks, i guess I'll simply have to go for a DAS enclosure, or replace my hard drives with larger capacity ones.
I just wish someone made a pcie x4 to 4x sata controller splitter so that the 1st sata slot would continue to work...