Stacking External Drives or rebuilding a data server PC?

[dalfollo]

I have a new main system, that is limited in the number of HDs I can add to it. In a perfect world I would like to buy a box that could hold 2-4 HDs and either network them directly to my home network, or hook them up to one of my PCs and have folks map to them....would be nice if I could just run them as storage without a PC handling all the transfer/work.

Seems to me right now I would have to plug in several external HD enclosures to accomplish this, running off of a PC, taking up a many USB ports as needed....if I am worng please correct me.

On the other hand I have a server box with space for maybe 16 HDs....I believe that I have blown either the motherboard or the CPU (ABIT KT-7 RAID/Thunderbird 1GHz CPU)...I am considering rebuilding this to work as a Data server/Print server....I have 1GB PC100/PC133 SDRAM that I would like to use if the CPU turns out to be the problem...but no new MBs will take that memory...seems all the Socket A MB are set up for DDR....but I hate to spend money rebuilding it, to have it whine in the background using fairly dead technology...

Any suggestions on getting several HDs back to being available on the network appreciated....

 

[imported_Phil]

I'd buy some Firewire enclosures and chain them together, thus using just one Firewire port on the host computer.

 

[WackyDan]

Buy one of the linksys or trendnet USB storage servers... $90 plus up to two external enclosures. I've got 2 250's on my linksys mirrored.

 

[DaveSimmons]

For around $100 on a Hot Deal the Netgear NAS box lets you install 2 IDE? drives inside it and it acts as a network storage server. That seems cleaner than the servers that let you attach USB drives (2 drives = 3 power bricks).

 

[Rock Hydra]

You could buy PCI internal hard drive controllers.