Your probably best off getting something like this
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/rr2340.htm

16x SATA card in PCI-E 8x
~$600 AUS which works out at around $40 per drive

An motherboard with an onboard gbit ethernet attached to the northbridge 
would be your other requirement really
Beefy Power supply might also be in order although once running you 
should be ok, A high quality 600W should do you.

I'd suggest running linux on the thing to get the flexibility you want 
with regards drive sizing and moving around.
You will probably want RAID just because disk failure becomes more 
likley with more drives.
Use software raid especially where performance isn't an issue otherwise 
if the controller card fries and you can't get another your hosed.

I'd suggest blocks of 4 drives or so if thats comfy for you.
RAID 4x 500gb drives in raid 5 for 1.5TB of storage with LVM sitting on 
top of that.
In around a year or so when 1TB drives are in the sweet spot stick 4 of 
them in and up your storage to 4TB in total. Expand your partition with 
LVM and just keep adding stuff.
Every year you add 4 drives. In 4 years you toss the first batch of 
drives you had which will be pretty much End Of Life by then and replace 
them with the 40 bazillion gb drives that will be floating about then.

Or more likley give the whole system to charity after copying its entire 
content onto the latest generation of USB thumb drive.

Apptech wrote:
> I want to add numerous SATA drives to a LAN.
> 8 would do, more would be good. This is by definition a 
> "server" requirement but lacks most of the rigour associated 
> with the term. Aspects such as backup, mirroring etc need 
> not be addressed here.
>
> "All that is required" is to be able to read and, less 
> often, write files at "an acceptable speed". ie not stupidly 
> slower than if on a typical PC. Application is mainly access 
> to photos. Files are typically in the 1 MB-3MB range but 
> there MAY be a  Quantum leap for new files to 10MB+ each. 
> (RAW rather than JPG).
>
> Drives are typically 300 GB range but newer one will be 500 
> MB and maybe 1 TB soon. Optimum $/GB is about at 500 GB 
> point. . (2TB are on the market but too dear yet)
>
> Longer term this will probably become a more orderly 
> arrangement of fewer larger drives.
>
> QUESTION:
>
> Best cheap way to do this?
>
> Two obvious ways are
>
> 1     Several multi SIDE cards in 1 PC. Say 2 x or 3x  - 4 
> drive cards.
>
> 2     Add USBS front ends to drives.
>
> Option 2 is less certain and dearer.
> Option 1 is liable to create more PSU hassles.
>
> Any other good options?
>
> Does anyone to an SIDE tower at a price that costs notably 
> less per slot than the HDD that goes in it?
> Anything of seen that takes NxSIDE makes the disk cost a 
> minor part of the exercise.
>
>
>
>
>
>         Russell
>
>
> Just for information:    If using RAW at 10 MB+/photo. If eg 
> a wedding takes 3000 photos all up that's 30 GB for one 
> event. Requirements grow apace. Taking less photos may help 
> :-). (Wedding can be pre-photos, hair stylists, bride 
> preparing, limo to wedding, outside, wedding, outside again, 
> guest greeting, formal groups, bridal group photos, 
> reception and dancing till late, Numbers add up.
>
> As this is NOT my 'day job' there aren't too many of these, 
> but enough to need something better than at present.
>
> 1st recent China visit produced ~ 9000 photos.
> 2nd produced ~ 3000.
>
> I don't want to go to RAW format but it seems it might be a 
> good idea, alas.
>
>
>
>
>
>   

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