Question Gigabyte the only one left allowing for discrete SATA port disabling

[BarkingGhostar]

Morning All. Not sure if I asked before, or in recent times. It seems from my component buying options late last year that things deemed of value have changed in the computer component world, and features on some components. Late last year I bought the Asrock X670-E Taichi motherboard thinking I could discretely enable/disable the four m.2 NVMe connectors but learned the hard lesson late in that this wasn't something native to the NVMe design as it lacks an external; controller and connects directly to the CPU. Worse yet was that this $300 motherboard lacked any ability to enable/disable the primary four SATA ports or the four secondary SATA ports. While they may be hot-swappable in the sense I can just physically unplug and plug back in their SATA connectors, I cannot turn individual ports on/off.

I used this feature on my elderly PC which is 11 years old. I since, haven learned that late hard lesson, that this isn't something Asrock seems to be interested in providing, and as others have posted online about the seemingly only verified manufacture these days is Gigabyte. But I take that news with a grain of salt and wonder if anyone on Anand might have been utilizing this discrete (per port) toggling in the BIOS (UEFI), and if so on what maker and chipset?

 

[Tech Junky]

discrete (per port) toggling in the BIOS

My question would be what's the point? It won't give you any benefit anywhere else other than disable a data source.

 

[kschendel]

I suppose I could maybe sorta-kinda possibly imagine wanting this if I were doing multi-boot off of SATA drives, and wanted to entirely disable my (say) Linux boot drive while installing Winders because the latter likes to piss all over other boot drives in the system. (or at least used to, been a long time since I tried it.)

Unless you're doing that a *lot*, it would seem just as easy to temporarily pull a data or power cable.

One also has to wonder if the hardware even supports it. I guess you could disable a separate controller, but does the chipset support toggling individual SATA ports? quite possibly not.

 

[Tech Junky]

Winders

Install first and then grub it into the boot options. It always thinks it is the only os and will F up anything else. It doesn't look for other options and just assumes there's nothing else being used. It still wants to be a Monopoly.

 

[zir_blazer]

My question would be what's the point? It won't give you any benefit anywhere else other than disable a data source.

Seriously you can't come with ideas to answer your own question?
I still have as "good practice" installing Windows with only its own drive plugged in because I had issues in WXP times where having two drives in the same system could make Windows installer decide to write the MBR Boot Loader into the other disk. Thus if you remove that disk, your Windows install on the main disk would suddently become unbooteable. Same as not allowing a troublesome or virus infected OS to access plugged disks in case that I'm too lazy to physically remove them.

 

[Tech Junky]

MBR

Anything in the past couple of years requires GPT/UEFI to work not to mention anything over 2TB.

Also, what was an option 10+ years ago as OP mentioned isn't a thing these days. If you want to dual boot you either install W first and then anything else or you quit being lazy and pull the cable from the 2nd drive before doing so.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

On my old PC (the one I'm typing from) I can go into the BIOS and selectively enable individual SATA ports and allow isolation between disks, or not. Not going to go into a need-basis for the question, but rather noting a feature that had existed in the past and now seems to have disappeared.

Okay, let me give an example of how my old PC is setup. I had Windows 10 Pro on an SSD, and an exact clone on another SSD. I routinely nuke the clone and create a new one. I also do this with a third instance of said Windows when I am experimenting. And then there is the Linux SSD, its clone SSD, a beta Linux SSD and so on.

On the new PC I was going to have one SSD for the wife, one SSD to clone for the wife, one SSD for me, another SSD to clone for me, ..., you get the picture. Of course I could go all 1999 and shade-tree by dangling SATA and power cables out the side of the PC case, but that isn't very elegant.

I guess I could just build a powerful VM host machine and VM everything.

 

[Tech Junky]

That method of cloning everything for redundancy is a bit outdated with how things have changed but, it's still valid I suppose.

When drives were slow and it took hours to rebuild from scratch it made more sense. I just keep things in a couple of places at this point since my laptop has dual M2 sockets I have a spare inside and tend to keep all DL's on my server by default. The server has a secondary M2 as well which I setup rsync to copy the vital stuff from the OS drive kind of as a snapshot just in case I'm messing with things and bork something I can then boot to a live USB and just copy the files back as needed.

My server though which is just a PC functioning as the router / AP / DVR / NAS / etc. It's a simple setup but, it works. If I bork Windows it normally takes about 5 mins to format and install again w/ the speed of the drives inside. Apps take a bit of time but, it's more of an annoyance than an issue but, I would say to "restore" things takes about a half hour and it's a clean install w/o all the junk that accumulates over time.

If you're looking to simplify things then I would maybe go for a primary drive that holds all of your boot options 2-4TB and then a secondary of the same size and just mirror them or automate backups with something like Paragon HDD manager to make compressed images for safe keeping. Otherwise you could use clonezilla to either make an image or cloned bootable backup for free.

Since you're talking about getting a new MOBO maybe turn the existing one into the "NAS" to replicate things to as a backup? Also, consider other methods for copying data back and forth if time is an issue. I contemplated adding 10GE to the mix but, the cost was silly for the laptop as an dongle would be ~$160 + a NIC for the server another $80. I thought about it and just use Thunderbolt instead and get 15gbps out of it using a cheap $20 cable. Sure, it's a bit less convenient than a 20ft Ethernet cable but, it's 3X faster than my 5gbps dongle. WIFI 7 would be another option but tops out about 5gbps as well and more expense for the AP ~$250+.

 

[WilliamM2]

I find it amazing that a $400 full ATX motherboard only has 2 PCI-e slots, and 4 USB ports on back.

MB are getting much more expensive, and dropping all the old standard features. A board like this used to be in the $85 range, for $200 you got all the bells and whistles. And that was just a couple years ago.

 

[Tech Junky]

@WilliamM2

It all comes down to timing and the market. A lot of them are dropping slots for gamers trying to squeeze 3-4 slot GPUs in them. More are adding m2 slots instead of other ports due to the lack of lanes.

 

[WilliamM2]

@WilliamM2

It all comes down to timing and the market. A lot of them are dropping slots for gamers trying to squeeze 3-4 slot GPUs in them. More are adding m2 slots instead of other ports due to the lack of lanes.

That would make sense, but my B550 has three NVME slots, 4 PCI-s slots, and can still fit a 3 slot GPU. A 4 slot GPU would still leave three open PCI-e slots. And 7 USB ports on the back. It's a 3 years old AM4, with more limited lanes, so it can be done.

They are gouging us, and at the same time cheeping out on features.

 

[Tech Junky]

They are gouging us, and at the same time cheeping out on feature

I don't disagree that the boards and options are lopsided but, if you shop around you can find what you're looking for. I picked up a pg lightning x670e for $160 with 4 slots. I tend to have a mental threshold of $250 when it comes to a board and tend not to do consumer types of things. My goals are to pack as much into a board at that price point and try to spread the resources evenly. The biggest issue right now is the extended lanes on AMD are x4 where Intel is x8.