External Power/Hard drives/etc....

[Ninjahedge]

Full story is this:

I have 5x500G in a RAID5 now. I have 3 more slots. I just got 4 1.5TB drives the other day. Problem is two-fold. 1, I do not have enough Molex->SATA adapters, 2, I don't know that even if I did, that I would have enough power to run 8 drives and a system drive.

I want to add 3 drives (fill up the RAID) and start a second RAID5. Copy all the data from the 5 to the 3 (that is probably the most power hungry) and then disconnect the 5, add the 4th 1.5T to the array and reconstruct.

I am just looking for something I may be able to plug in externally that would have a few power outlets for the drives (or, possibly, a way to short out the Soft Switch to allow a regular PS to power these drives).

Any help would be appreciated.

[profzoom]

Ninj,

With all those drives I would look into these.

http://www.drobo.com/resources/drobodemo.php

a little pricey but can do much more then our SAN at our DC can and these are for home use.

[Ninjahedge]

Looks very nice, but the Pro (8 disk) runs more than a whole new system.

Very useful for buisness, but when I already have an 8 port card in there, it is kind of redundant (also, having to run it as a seperate entity, no net access or anything, is liek a big fancy external HD. I need to be able to run proggies to get things like Bleach, ya know? :D)

BTW, i liked this when I first saw it a year or so back. I think it is a really great system, but like you said, $$!