Slack-Moehrle wrote: > Hi John, > > Yes, I looked into this and I was looking for a solution with a large number of drives, but at a good cost point. > > So you are saying a full fledged PC with an 8-port sata mobo is a better solution. > yeah, its cheaper to go direct connect internal jbod. make sure the drives get plenty of airflow, don't pack them too close together. a bunch of vendors sell 5-in-3 sata hotswap adapters that hold 5 SATA drives in 3 HH external bays of a jumbo tower chassis. they seem to run about $100. each drive bay has its own sata port on the back of these. example of one of these, http://www.amazon.com/SUPERMICRO-Hot-Swap-Mobile-System-Cabinet/dp/B00009ILU0 if you get a motherboard that has a 2nd x8 or x16 slot, you can put an x4 PCI-express card in that for lots more SATA/SAS channels if you feel the need to really expand. I wouldn't put more than 4 SATA ports on a PCI-E x1 slot.