John R Pierce wrote: >, >> >> 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. There are other brands/sizes of those trayless hotswap enclosures too. I've used a unit from Startech and swapped one of the drives out of a raid weekly for an off-site rotation without any trouble for over a year now. You do need a big tower case that could take 5" drives all the way down, but it's nicer than having cables and power off to an odd-sized external box and very handy to not have to open the case to trade drives once it is set up. If this is a single-user PC or even a media server for a few people at once you probably don't have to worry about extreme speed issues and would get along fine with an 8-port PCI-X or -E card. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com