SFF-8643 PCIe x4 to SATA conversion

Hardware Hub Storage
1

Howdy folks! Relative novice so be gentle. From my research so far it seems I’m likely hosed, but figure the community may have a solution.

I recently completed a DIY NAS build using a CWWK NAS board ( New Q670 4x Intel). This board sports two SFF-8643 ports; one for SATA 3 and the other for PCIe x4.

I’d hoped that the PCIe port could be repurposed for additional HDD storage capacity but it seems that’s unlikely. I did reach out to CWWK but haven’t heard back yet on whether or not the board supports it.

In lieu of some buried setting in BIOS that enables this, what options do I have to expand storage? At the moment I literally have only 1 more drive I’m trying to add to my pool, so hopefully that simplifies things. Thanks in advance!

Edit: Quick clarification the board I purchased and intended to use was the prior version which has 8x SATA but they sent the new one and I was told the older model was discontinued.

1 Like
2

If I’m understanding correctly, you want to go from the pci-e slot to more sata connectors? If this is the case then this
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803910012655.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.3.2ac07bebMlf2fQ
seems like what you might want. I’ve also seen adapters for M.2 to sata around.

similar item on Amazon

1 Like
3

Apologies I was new so couldn’t include a link. Aware of that option which might ultimately be the only one, but ideally I would find some way to convert the SFF-8643 connection configured for PCIe on this board to SATA somehow. Thanks for the input!

2 Likes
4

I think what you’re looking for is one of these which should give you 4 more SATA connections and the BIOS support should already be there or I don’t see what purpose a SFF-8643 for SATA would have…

1 Like
5

Correct. I’ve already populated the SFF-8643 connector that’s configured for SATA. I just got a 2nd of these exact cables and was hoping it would be plug and play for SATA on the PCIe connector as well. It’s plugged in but the drive doesn’t appear in TrueNAS or in BIOS, so I can only assume that’s because I can’t use the PCIe port for SATA signals out of the box (or maybe at all).

2 Likes
6

Ah, I see. If you have any free PCI slots then an adapter like the one that @MonstrousMicrobe posted is what you’ll need.

7

If you don’t have any free PCI slots then you may be able to use something like below to convert the miniSAS into PCI. Not ideal but it may be doable.

1 Like
8

Happened upon this as well. Lol the response from CWWK was “Hello, no”. The board is genuinely very interesting and has solid features but man this mix up has been a PITA.

1 Like
9

I was eyeing this board as well, but finally went with the x8 SATA variant myself because of that SFF-8643 PCI-E connector.

As for SFF-8643 you have a few choices:

  • use the 4xNVMe adapter that CWWK offers for this board if you want some more performance (at a higher cost for NVMe drives)
  • use SSF-8643 to PCI-E or m.2 slot converter and use SATA controller in it.

It will be a bit messy, but since you will choose the SATA controller, you decide how many ports you want.

Here you have an ASMedia based cards with 2-24(!) SATA ports
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005433911383.html

10

Did you end up throwing a U.2 into the other SFF-8643?