Sorry, but this is mostly a hardware issue related to your specific system board. I would suggest contacting the manufacturer's website and see what they say. Intel has a lot of Linux support on their site for their boards, but I don't know specifically about using any port-multiplier capabilities if they exist. I have an Intel S5000XVN mobo w/ 6 sata2 ports myself, but I haven't looked into the possibility of what you are interested in. For additional ports, I just added an Addonics 4-port esata (raid-capable) board which worked out-of-the-box with my CentOS (RHEL) 5 system. It only cost me about $50USD delivered when I got it over a year ago.