Asus z170-E 6 HDD and M.2?

[Sprtfan]

I need to repurposed the Asus Z170-E to be used as a Plex server. It has 6 SATA , 1 SATA Express, and 1 M.2 skt 3. The manual says 6 x SATA (2 from SATA Express) and that the M.2 shares SATA mode with SATA Express. I wanted to double check before buying a drive, but should I be able to connect 6 HDD to the SATA ports on the mobo and boot off the M.2 drive? The SATA Express port would not be available in this configuration though? or would I lose the 2 SATA ports from the SATA Express when using M.2? Thanks

 

[Nenu]

I have the Asus Maximus VIII Hero with an NVME boot drive and have had 8 SATA drives connected/working at once (it has an extra controller for 2 more drives).
This has the same validation as your board, you should be fine.

 

[Sprtfan]

I have the Asus Maximus VIII Hero with an NVME boot drive and have had 8 SATA drives connected/working at once (it has an extra controller for 2 more drives).
This has the same validation as your board, you should be fine.

Thanks, I thought that it should but thought it was worth double checking.

 

[E4g1e]

Yes. You can connect all six HDDs to your motherboard, as long as you are not using a m.2 SATA SSD. In other words, the m.2 SSD must be a PCIe version (commonly, but not always, NVMe). If the m.2 SSD uses SATA, then the two primary SATA ports become disabled and unusable.