Published Oct 29, 2026, 4:31 PM EDT

Richard is the PC Hardware Lead at XDA and has been covering the technology industry for almost two decades. He's been building PCs since young, and when not creating content, you can often find him inside a chassis somewhere.

Motherboards are fantastic. They connect all your PC parts together, acting as the foundation for everything to work in perfect harmony. What's more is they usually have an immense number of I/O options. For SATA and storage, depending on the motherboard form factor, you may have anywhere between two and eight SATA ports for SSDs and hard drives. There's a good chance most (if not all) are free and available. These spare SATA ports are the cheapest storage upgrade left for your PC.

Hard drives are still the cheapest means of storing data

Even though every type of data storage has increased in price

Looking to store more data locally? You'll need an extra drive or two. That's precisely where these spare SATA ports come into play.…