@bonifartius @RedTechEngineer @p @nyanide @raphiel_shiraha_ainsworth

>i'm not a hardware guy, i just wonder why so few boards include sata or m.2 ports.

Using ARM boards as desktops or servers is a relatively new concept and before that you didn't really need either of those. That's why. SATA needs a separate controller (usually on a PCIe bus), M.2 requires both of those and cheap-enough ARM chips with PCIe support came out only in the last few years.

With RISC-V it's the same story, but with even less traction and demand in the market.

>i'd really love an inexpensive arm board with many sata ports to build a small nas with

There are Raspberry Pi hats with ~4 SATA ports on them, if you want. But to me it feels like a hack instead of a proper solution. As p wrote before me, ODROID or TuringPi board are the more proper solution to that.