SATA RAID enclosures?

[Scott Ehrlich]

I'm looking to price SATA RAID enclosures to support user desktop backups, 
starting small (1 or 2 TB max) to start.   I've got about 5 users whose 
/home directories are being backed up via samba mounts (local cron job on 
their systems tar their end, and I simply copy the tgz and resulting log 
files to my end, tarring as incremental).

I'd aim for RAID 5 with four disks to start.  More systems could be added 
as time goes on.

What vendors and technologies (including iscsi vs straight scsi) do people 
recommend?  This is a small-scale task for now, but I want to plan some 
room for growth.

I've seen prices from a couple of places for enclosures ranging from $2g 
to $2500.   Also, what flexibility would there be if I wanted to simply 
add another same-size drive (or even larger) to the box to permit the RAID 
to incorporate that drive into the mix, preferably as a hot-add.

Thanks.

Scott

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