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Another alternative that I am currently researching is an esata card with external drive enclosures.
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Here's a vote for esata for a cheap, yet fast backup solution. We have an esata card in one of our systems with two external cases attached. Much better than any other external solution I've found for the average consumer.
I think we only paid about $24 for the cases at microcenter and I forget how much the card was. You just pop some standard oem sata II 300 drives in and you're good to go. Can't really tell the difference between internal and external speeds with this method.
When one of your cheap 1gb or 500gb drives fills up. Simply store it in the cheap case and pop on another. Or get another card and just keep adding to your always online setup.
One caution, drives over 500gb in a non-vented external case can heat up quickly and potentially reduce drive longevitiy.
This was all pc based. Not sure of what the esata options are for the mac folks.
We went the Raid 0 route on a build a few years ago. It is still working fine and does improve peformance. However, with our most recent build I just skipped raid all together and went with a raptor drive as the main system drive.