eSATA or network attached?

[korben_dallas]

Everytime I look at my SageTV server, I think it looks much larger than it needs to be. I could potentially move to a smaller sleeker looking case, but I'm concerned about future storage needs / options.

I have seen some really nice "Shuttle" type cases. And I have seen a plethora of hard drive enclosures.

Really my question comes down to direct attached or network attached? NAS appears to be much more flexible but at a higher cost of initial entry. Also, I saw little mention in the various drive enclosures regarding SATA III. And can you record directly to NAS?

[Nelbert]

Depending on what you mean by much larger than it needs to be you could alternatively move to something like a HP Microserver.

4 SATA bays and an empty 5 1/2" bay (which will take a 4x2.5" backplane) giving 8 internal bays. Also has a stupid amount of USB ports and an eSATA port as well as a pcie x16 and x1 slot.

Only thing I'd be wary about attaching drives to USB or eSATA is whether it's suitable for running 24/7. With most "cheap" external drive cases the intention is for file transport not 24/7 and the PSU life on 24/7 operations isn't that hot. I know because I've killed an eSATA housing psu and a USB housing PSU by having them attached and powered 24/7. Both were laptop style bricks and not in the case.

The USB cases were cheap and nasty, but the eSATA drive was ~£100

[stevech]

My decision was that since I have an always-on server to host sage and my web server, I just have more NTFS drives and some eSata ones. My really important files are on an eSata in an external enclosure. This is so that in an emergency, I can grab it and go. This happened last year when a brush fire forced an evacuation of the neighborhood and there's little time to do so.

SecondCopy keeps dupes on that external. My sensitive info is Zipfile encrypted and duped. Acronis for drive clone/imaging.

I do have two NASes - the under $100 variety (no drives). They work. But transfer rates are quite slow. One is Ethernet to two USB, and supports NTFS as well as FAT. $50 SimpleNet. The other is an Airlink 101 NAS (single drive, as the redundant backup). The SATAs inside the server are in RAID1 for hardware failure protection of the video stores.

But somehow, my routing file work is done to the server's internal SATA and eSata drives - fast, easy, etc. as windows Shares rather than clunky Linux/SMB in the NASes.

[PiX64]

Unraid all the way. It's cheap easy, expandable, heterogenous disks... Its really a very nice product.

I store all DVD and bluray on mine. I have no issue streaming 3 simultaneous blurays to different extenders.

Just to throw another option out there for ya.