Thanks for your reply. I did a bit of research after I posted that and learned about the sata/eSata brackets which essentially expose existing sata ports out the back of the computer. Then I read something about multi-lane eSata, and also read about how the multiplexers may be great for adding a larger amount of storage, but all data shares the 3 GB bandwidth of the single sata channel. So let me tell you what I'm doing and perhaps you can direct me.
My video system presently uses high-res 600 line cameras and each camera generates between 40 and 100 GB of video per week, depending on the level of activity detected in its field of view. While not megapixel IP cameras, the cameras I use look very close to traditional TV quality, and not the grainy video you see on the America's Most Wanted or the like. They are very good.
I have 8 cameras now and will shortly expand to 16. At present, I can store about a week's worth of video on a single 1 TB drive before overwriting the oldest videos. In additional to doubling the number of cameras, I need to expand the storage to accomodate closer to 30 days.
If 1TB provides 1 week of storage for 8 cameras, I believe I should need 8 GB to hold 4 weeks with 16 cameras, and (4) 2 GB drives in an external 4-bay enclosure should meet my needs. For managing disk IO bandwidth, GeoVision s/w allows directing video from each camera to a seperate drive so as to not *need* a h/w RAID solution, although this would certainly provide the added benefit of fault-tolerance (i.e. RAID 5 or 10)
While I am not looking to immediately buy everything at once, I do need to implement the correct infrastructure to get me where I need to be, and thus allow adding additional drives as I add more cameras.
My Dell Optiplex 990 tower has 4 sata ports on the MB. I cannot find anything to tell me whether it does or does not provide port multiplexing. So I presume it does not. Two sata ports are used for the system HD and the DVD writer, which leaves two open. I'm willing to add another SATA controller if necessary.
What are you thoughts?
Many thanks in advance!
Chris