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How many SATA ports are available without opening the case?

Andronome -  
 Andronome -
Hello everyone,

For Christmas, I want to give my dad an SSD for his old but still performing tower.
The only hiccup is, how can I make sure that there’s still a SATA port available on his motherboard without making him open the tower?

The little software SIW (System Information for Windows) gives me a lot of information about the hardware, but does it provide the number of connected SATA ports and the number of free ports?

Knowing that I want to surprise him, I’d just like him to launch SIW, pretending that I need some information before we format it at Christmas (we’ve already talked about this with my dad)

The motherboard in question is an Asus PK5 Pro.

I found several compatible models (in fact, all those in SATA if I understood correctly?)

Thanks in advance for your replies!

2 answers

  1.
    Cpassimple Posted messages 3987 Status Member 924
     
    Hello
    Check the exact model name of the PC your father has
    get information either from the manufacturer or do a Google search of the motherboard name along with the model name of the PC
    From there you can see how many ports it has.
    But anyway, for an SSD to be effective, it needs to be the system partition, so it should replace the C: partition

    Be careful, if the PC is too old and especially with branded PCs, an SSD may be incompatible (I have the bad memory of wanting to boost an old Compaq)

    i7 4790k 4.9GHz/ Seidon 120V Rev.2 / 16Go 2133MHz / GTX 980 ti
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  2. Andronome
     
    Hi Cpassimple,

    This is a PC that he had assembled 8 years ago. No documentation is available. It already has two physical drives: one with the OS and the other for backups.
    So I am going to format the system drive and install the new OS on the SSD. My goal is to provide him with reduced application load times, as well as OS boot loading times. Since he has never formatted his PC before, this was the perfect opportunity to switch to an SSD.
    As I mentioned in my first post, the motherboard is an Asus PK5 Pro. Some sites like Kingston offer compatible SSDs. I just wanted to confirm that it’s only a matter of being able to connect it (the BIOS is also compatible; if needed, I can update it, but I’ve never done that before...)
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    1. Judge_DT Posted messages 27651 Registration date   Status Moderator Last intervention   10 015
       
      Hello,

      6 SATA 2 ports: https://dlcdnwebsites.asus.com/maintain/web/500.html

      So theoretically, there should be one available without issue.

      It still needs to be confirmed whether the SSD is compatible with the system, especially the BIOS and storage controller.

      What OS is the machine running? If it’s Windows 7 (or newer), there should be no problem, it should normally work.

      From memory, the P5K series had a lot of issues due to its particular storage controller that didn't support SSD in AHCI mode (which is necessary for an SSD)... and sometimes it was necessary to install a "custom" BIOS to get SSD support with Intel Matrix drivers... anyway, it was the good old days of the first SSDs and not quite compatible motherboards.
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      1. Andronome > Judge_DT Posted messages 27651 Registration date   Status Moderator Last intervention  
         
        I can’t find the links I consulted, but I’m pretty sure that with the PK5 Pro, the BIOS has no issue with AHCI (the problems were mainly for all the other "less advanced" variants of the PK5). And if needed, I've already downloaded the latest ROM as well as all the new versions of the motherboard drivers.
        This PC is indeed running Windows 7.

        I was mainly wondering if there is any software method to see the number of ports being used?

        In fact, I’m not sure what is potentially connected via SATA on the motherboard that could be occupying a port, aside from the hard drives?
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      2. Judge_DT Posted messages 27651 Registration date   Status Moderator Last intervention   10 015 > Andronome
         
        For the use of SATA ports... Not many things.

        -> Reader/writer
        -> Hard drives
        -> Possible front bays for reading hard disks or something similar.

        Generally, nothing more and no "software" way to know the number of used/available ports, apart from the BIOS which sometimes lists the devices in the machine and the number of ports occupied.
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      3. Andronome > Judge_DT Posted messages 27651 Registration date   Status Moderator Last intervention  
         
        Very well, thank you. That answers my question :)
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    2. Cpassimple Posted messages 3987 Status Member 924
       
      Re: indeed, this type of motherboard may encounter problems with SSDs
      Or check with the manufacturer if the latest ROM (BIOS update) includes IMR (Intel Matrix RAID) or JMicron

      and yes, I did some research for you
      here is the most reliable one I found
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