Anyone recommend a Dual Drive External Enclosure?

[WhereEaglesDare]

I am looking to replace my server with a newer PC.  The server right now houses 5 drives and it totals to ablout 1.5 TB of space, I am thinking of getting 2 1.5 TB drives and put them in a dual USB enclosure on the new server.  Anyone use a dual bay external enclosure? 

[BobA]

There are lots of dual drive enclosures but I would not use USB.  To get around the speed hit use esata so the drives transfer at the same speed as the internal drives.   You can put esata on any server if you do not have the port by putting a esata external adapter into any sata port you have left.   If you do not have any sata ports left an esata adapter to add extra ports would be warranted.

[drventure]

+1 on esata. Definitely wouldn't go usb.

When I had to replace my Iomega SAN box, I just built up a cheap machine, that had raid on the mobo, and stuck 2 2TB drives in it, and mirrored them. It was actually slightly cheaper than buying a prebuilt SAN box.

That machine runs headless in my closet. When I need to get to it, I use remote access.

[JODY]

USB 3 might not be so bad but USB 2 or less would be much slower than a regular internal drive.  There are other options.  ESata for example.  I have a server that supported around 8 drives via the motherboard but I ran out of slots in the case.  To add more drives, I bought 2 eSata brackets (each having 2 eSata ports and a 5V power connector), a 5V power cabler, and a 5V power splitter cable.  I put 2 drives in an external PC case (no power supply or anything...the PC case had a broken power switch so I had gutted it earlier), connected the drives to an eSata bracket in the case and connected both drives to the eSata's power connector via a power cable splitter.  Then ran eSata cables and a power cable from that case over to an eSata bracket in the main PC.  Connected that eSata bracket to the PC motherboard via SATA cables and connected power to the power supply.  Other than being in an external case, the drives get power from the main PC and connect via SATA (through several cables including eSATA).