Multiple Hard Drives

[Bluez]

I have this problem that I seem to be collecting hard drives - the 3.5" type.
There is currently 3 in the box, possibly soon to be joined by a fourth.
I had 2 initially, but then my one external hard drive had a power failure, so I moved it to the box. It seems now that my other external hard drive's power supply is also giving notice, so it might also need to move.
Also, I'm thinking of getting (saving up) for a 3 or 4 TB for a backup drive.
Thing is, my motherboard is running out of space for all the connectors... so some advice is needed.
So, my dumb question for the day is: what is better a bunch of external hard drive enclosures with a massive USB hub or is there something else that I can use?

[Hman]

Something like this?

[Bluez]

So, excuse my noobness here (hardware is my weak point), you just chuck this card onto the motherboard and it expands the number of slots that is available to connect hard drives to?

[Hman]

Yep.

[StarBound]

Well firstly what motherboard do you have? Because I have 8 ports on my board if I remember correctly. 4x sata2 and 4x sata3.

[Bluez]

I have got an Asus P7P550 with 6 SATA 3's (if I am reading correctly) (info here). It seems that I might have some PCI slots available when having a quick look at my device manager.

[StarBound]

don't you have an e-sata port somewhere? I think you can get 2-4 ports on a pci-e slot.

[Bluez]

There is definitely an e-SATA on the motherboard.

[rustypup]

warning: mickeysoft reads these expansion cards as being "significant system changes" and will likely reset license status...

[Cataclysm_ZA]

When I was working in retail two years ago I sold two of the enclosures linked below to different customers, one for external backups and one for hosting all their media. It was only for two drives and used USB 2.0, but it worked. The newer version uses USB 3.0 and space for four drives. Only costs twice as much but that's pretty much a bargain.

Vantec NexStar HX4 @ R1198

Other than that, the only other option you may have is setting up a second machine using something like ZFS and Linux, but that's some hassle and expense if it's only storage you're looking for.

[Bluez]

Wow, I love the way the enclosure looks... and that will definitely help if I run out of physical space to put the hard drives in the PC box. And there is the added bonus of not having to worry about license reset problems

Thank you guys. I will look at both options, as well as the corresponding budget going with it as I am also looking at a 3TB hard drive too, but this will help so much already.