What's the best and cheapest way to host multiple hard drives?

[Arkitech]

So I have all these old drives around the house with data I want to eventually backup onto DVD. Is there a way for me to build a machine that will hold 8-10 drives at a time? I would like to just have a case with nothing but a power supply and hard drives that either sits on a network or attaches to another PC. Is this possible? How much would it cost me?

 

[imported_Phil]

We have something like that, but for SCSI disks at work- an AT-style case, with power supply and case fan, and two 4-bay SCA caddies. I'm not entirely sure how you're going to go about using IDE disks though, as you won't be able to chain them together as you can with SCSI.

For instance, this hard disk unit uses one SCSI connector. For the same number of IDE disks, you'd need four, and they can only be a certain length.

Multiple USB enclosures will probably be the easiest way to go, but not very cheap.