Need to add more eSATA ports

first

what are you doing with 8 internal HDD's and 6 external hdd's?

do you really have to have all of them connected all the time?

perhaps a hotswappable HDD base that allows you to just plug in whichever HDD you need at the moment?

i mean yeah you can just plug in a PCI card....but at some point the # of HDDs your'e running just becomse ridiculous......

i mean are they all like 250GB? right now on newegg you can get a 2TB drive for 100 bucks

now maybe these are all 1tb drives and you actually need that storage space....

What the heck do you care?! You answer my question with another question; never mind one that is completely irrelevant towards providing me with any kind of useful advice. Geez!! I mean, nothing personal or anything; the last thing I want to do is flame someone for at least responding to my inquiry, but that really irked me. How did you think that response would provide any kind of value whatsoever? By somehow shaming me by inferring that I'm "ridiculous" just b/c I happen to have HUGE storage needs?

Sorry, but sometimes going out and replacing a bunch of old hard drives w/ a hotswappable base, or a bunch of 2TB replacements is what we call cost-prohibitive. Am I ridiculous for wanting to take advantage of the slew of external HDDs I've received as xmas gifts over the years, as opposed to expanding/consolidating my storage by spending $500 on 2TB drives? Seriously, did you think you were actually helping me? Sorry to sound so pissed, it just seemed like such a condescending reply you wrote.

man you need to calm down. the majority of pci and pce-Express to sata cards have extremely poor reviews. WHy put yourself in a situation where a bunch of small drives that are outdated are giving you a even bigger headache becausethey are non bootable, or the read/write speeds are slow. U need to consider what the responder was kind enough to tell you. Replace smaller drives with a bigger one Or go ahead and buy your pci card and look forward to headache.

Ok, I'll admit that I was a little hard on the guy (notice how I apologized to him at the end of the post?), but he did not explain himself in such a way that I could have automatically interpreted that I needed to "replace smaller drives with a bigger one", or that going the route I was thinking of going would create an even bigger "headache". This is how you interpreted it, but how would you expect me to know that? One thing that seems to be common, lately, on forums like this is that the experts (ie. presumably you, and the first guy that responded) sometimes don't show any patience with newer folks like me; nor do they understand that some folks might not know as much as them. Instead, a terse, often condescending response will follow a completely innocuous question like the one I initially posed. Instead of just informing me that I'd be looking at a bigger headache if I went forward with my initial plan, you pose a question that infers I should already know this. How stupid of me, right?

Of course, I've been lucky in that most responders to my questions on this forum thus far have been polite and genuinely interested in helping me out. Who knows - you're likely not the knowledge-snob you came across as in your post, and yes, I'll admit that my reply to the first fella could have been formed in a less angry tone. But will you concede that both you and the first guy were a bit on the condescending side in your attempts to provide me with your knowledge? Sorry for the diatribe; I'm just a little sick of this kind of thing happening here. Bad string of luck lately. Nothing personal.

Thank you, Paperdoc!! You're right on the money with this; I appreciate you taking the time to look into this for me. Exactly what I was looking for!

Best answer selected by confuxion.

Six months later, I stumble across this thread and marvel at the close-minded rudeness of the original poster. He said he didn't want to flame anyone but his response was a flame. Of course, hard drives create heat and also demand a lot of energy from the power supply unit. It doesn't matter much how big each drive is, but a large number of drives require a good, high-powered PSU, very likely more than this fellow had. Retributive justice, I'd say. The fellow who attempted to help knew what he was talking about—and it was merely good advice; it did not HAVE to be followed, but it behooved the poster to at least consider the information. Seems to me the poster would since have patched together a really, really bad computer system.

Carson, you couldn't be more right on this one. It's only in hind-sight that I can now see that (well, I knew it was a dick move almost immediately, but I had already eaten my foot by then). In all honesty, it was way out of character for me to react that way - even considering the fact it was posted within a week of being diagnosed with the Big "C", but I don't mean for that to serve as an excuse. There's nothing more I hate than when some newby posts a relatively broad question on a forum where there are many experts surely to reply, then bitches about the tone or content of said replies w/o even considering what the person was trying to say. The fact that I did think long and hard about what the original responder said, after the fact, and then corrected what was a terrible strategy for my storage needs, served as evidence of how ignorant my initial response truly was.

All I can say, while fully conceding your point, is that I definitely deserved someone coming around and calling out my bulls**t as you've now done. I should feel lucky that it wasn't done as immediately and by more people. There were no ill intentions on my part, but that hardly matters when you can't go back and erase your stupid thoughts that turn into words on the internet. Like I said, more power to you for calling it out, and I apologize to anyone else who found my retort offensive. No hard feelings, Carson.