Recommend External HD Setup

[yeon_yoon]

Hi all,
Currently I have 3 2TB harddrives on my system but I am running out of space. One way of fixing this might be to go through and delete files I don't use but I've decided to get more storage instead. I've read some articles on RAID and I'm not entirely against it but I'm not really looking to boost access speed if it results in higher failure rates and excessively higher costs. What I am looking for is to (i) increase my storage by another 6TB or so, (ii) have these drives on an external as I don't want to cramp my desktop too much and (iii) have the same (or close to same) speed (SATA) on these extra HDs as my internal HDs. It seems like there should be an easy answer to this like an external enclosure with a SATA connection but I guess I'm not searching the right terms or not familiar enough with the terms to search for them. If someone could recommend a setup, particular products or point me a guide for beginners I would really appreciate it. I built my own desktop but that is the extent of my hardware experience.

Thanks in advance.

 

[popatim]

Does your pc have an Esata port? USB3 would be the next fastest common interface.

I would recommend a NAS. Throw in a couple of 3 or 4tb WD Red drives. To me external drives are only for backups or transporting copies of files. Never for main storage. They fail way to often plus they have the added risk of being dropped, unplugged accidentally or too soon....
I usually recommend Qnap or Synology NAS's and with a gigabit network you can usually get 80-100mb/s transfer speeds with fast drives at both ends.

if any of these files are important files, whats your backup plan? Moving them to external storage is not a backup. You need them stored in at least 2 different places minimum and not like 2 different partitions on the same drive. You see moving files to an external drive still leaves them only in 1 location and thats a recipe for disaster.