the other way i was looking into was skipping network altogether i have a couple of sata hdds at the momment and i have an external sata port on computer

a caddy that can hold couple sata hdds but the key is it can connect to sata not usb

No much much worse than that, we said we are the federal govt so we paid 3 to 4 times more than retail

We just got a NAS in, that cost us $60K, it is not too bad but up against the SAN it is like comparing an atari 2600 with a wii

What about one of these?

i dont think NAS is very good value for money - also you dont get RAID on a NAS cheaply.

you never mentioned what you wanted it to actually do.

I looked into NAS a year ago and evened up building a box just for a file/ dhcp/ print/ music/ porn server. was more expensive in total but does a lot more and i have raid 5.

are u runnin gigabit or megabet network tim?

ok i dont need a media centre i already have computer on main tv for media which is wireless..

basically i just want to put my two sata drives externally. for music and photo backup.

at first i thought be good to have it networked but im not to worried about that

but i just wana get the two sata drives external and turn them on when i need them.

but connect them through sata on the back of my board rather than usb

There is always an external eSATA Drive.

You can get a card that extends the SATA to a port on the back of your computer, it works just like USB but you get the speed of SATA.

yeah i already have external sata port on my mother board just need a caddy to match it that can hold 1 or 2 hdds

ah well, caddys are cheap, then just buy a 750GB moster and your set.

yeah i got couple really huge drives just cant seem to find a caddy that has e-sata port instead of usb most websites are not very descriptive