What would you do?

[jadawgis732]

I have a 1TB drive on a home server (optiplex gx520) running Windows HS 2003. I want to increase the capacity to 3TB+ and there are only 2 Sata ports. How would you do this? I'm thinking along the lines of pci Raid card, but I don't mind upgrading to a new MB+CPU. But I don't want a reduced IO for the storage. The reason I want raid (I really don't) is because without it I'd have to store stuff on two independent volumes, and access them independently, right? I mean I know about Windows 7 libraries, which can add two different folders to a single accessible folder, but what other ways could I do access folders from independent drives in a centralized place other than RAID? How would you guys attack this problem?
Thanks for any input.

Regards,

 

[buwish]

Without upgrading the MOBO and such, your best bet would be to set up a RAID 0 between 2 newer 2TB drives, but that only gives you 2TB, not the 3 you are looking for. If I were you, I would probably upgrade the MOBO with something that has more SATA ports. Don't mess around with a PCI raid card.

 

[masterasia]

How many PCI-E slots do you have left? I was having similar issues with my file server. I only had 4 sata ports. I bought a PCI-E x1 raid card and now I have 4 more SATA ports. I'm not using it for raid though, just needed some more SATA ports. It's been working fine. No slow downs or bottlenecks that I'm aware of.