Patent ID: 7912044

Claim:
An expandable structure for peripheral storage devices, comprising: an interface controller having a plurality of connecting ports for serial data transmission; and a Port Multiplier electrically connected to one of the connecting ports of the interface controller for serial data transmission, and the Port Multiplier having a plurality of expanded connecting ports, wherein each of the expanded connecting ports is in direct connection between one peripheral storage device and the connecting port of the interface controller, wherein the peripheral storage device is arbitrarily a parallel data transmission mode or a serial data transmission mode, and the connecting port of the interface controller conforms to essentially the serial data transmission mode, and each of the expanded connecting ports comprises a data-transmission-mode-process circuit for automatically detecting a data transmission mode of the peripheral storage device connected to the expanded connecting port to determine whether the connected peripheral storage device is with the parallel data transmission mode or the serial transmission mode, and converting parallel data to serial data and outputting the converted serial data to the interface controller if the connected peripheral storage device is with the parallel data transmission mode.