I'm looking to build a Server that will support 5 or 6 Sata drives.. I asked the local Network Admin at work (he builds servers too).. he says that they're non-existent unless I use SCSI drives. Do you guys know of any good motherboards / a case, that will hold and support 5 or 6 of these babies?

Your local net admin seems to be forgetting that you can get pci-e and pci-x sata controller cards. Theoretically, if you have enough slots you could get upwards of 10-16 drives before you have to do anything too fancy (like splitting up an 8x or 16x slot into multiple slots).
As for cases, your average server case usually supports around 8 drives. My Xclio case supports 6 i believe. I currently have 5 drives running in my home computer, 4 Raptor X's and one 150 gig WD. And 3 servers i have at work have 6-7 drives per server, all sata for the good money/performance ratio.

Many of the newer nForce and Intel boards have 6 SATA ports.

SCSI? Your local network admin still seems to be living in the 90's...

Quote: Original post by Nypyren
Many of the newer nForce and Intel boards have 6 SATA ports.

SCSI? Your local network admin still seems to be living in the 90's...

Yeah, i was thinking the same. Though maybe he meant SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)? While SCSI is still widely used, its quickly giving way to SAS, and SATA as a cheaper solution, especially with the addition of NCQ through AHCI (God there are too many acronyms in the tech world).

The Antec P180 has 6 internal 3.5s, plus an external that I'm assuming could hold a hard drive easy enough. A lot of motherboards seem to be sporting 4 SATA ports, and expansion boards should fill up the rest of your needs nicely.

Quote: Original post by Instigator
I'm looking to build a Server that will support 5 or 6 Sata drives.. I asked the local Network Admin at work (he builds servers too).. he says that they're non-existent unless I use SCSI drives.

O Rly?

Please relay the following URL to him.

Quote:
Do you guys know of any good motherboards / a case, that will hold and support 5 or 6 of these babies?

ASUS Motherboard with 6 SATA

I like ASUS, but if you look through Newegg Motherboards (using your preferred brand) I'm sure you'll find a motherboard that meets your requirements. Ditto for cases.

EDIT: Clickly Linky.

I have an intel 975x MB and it has 8 SATA ports IIRC 7 are internal and one is eSata?