Just a note on optical drives. What I decided when I built my current machine was to buy a portable USB optical drive. That way it doesn't use up SATA ports (I've some old disks using those) or take up room in the case (I've a fan where the optical drive would go). Since I only use it to rip CDs and DVDs for personal use, and when installing the OS I use USB sticks I don't even need to leave it attached most of the time and it also means I can use it with my EEEPC if I want to watch something on that when travelling or whatever.
I know it's not the optimal solution for everyone but to me it made sense.

No optical drive wouldnt work for me 273, but makes sense in a lot of ways. If you want to get the maximum number of SATA drives into the system, and dont need a optical drive on a regular basis, its worth trying.

Why bother with an external enclosure?

I dont know how many old external HDDs you have, but assuming that you've got 2 x 1TB + 4 x 500GB, that is only 4TB. You can get a 4TB single drive easily.

Even if you had far more externals, and didnt want to get a 4TB internal for whatever reason, you can still have 3-5 2-3TB drives for 6-15TB.

You wont need a huge case to fit 3 to 5 HDDs, + a SSD. Many mid-ATX cases will take 6 or more 3.5'' drives and also have space for 5.25'' optical (etc.) drives.

The only 'issue' with 5 HDDs + a SSD is that with most motherobards, you only get 6 SATA ports. Boards with more SATA ports are normally using soem nasty addon SATA controller which generally have pretty nasty performance. This is another reason why you should ignore 'top hardware' lists....a lot of places will rate a system with a whole heap of junk you dont need or want as 'higher end' than other boards simply because its 'got more boxes ticked'.

*edit- you can even get miniITX cases that will take 5+ HDDs-

http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-q25/

http://www.techspot.com/review/446-l...q25/page2.html

I dont know what distro you are thinking of using, if its something fairly current I'd probably go for a LGA 1150 'haswell' system over a LGA 1155 'ivy bridge' or 'sandy bridge' system.

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While an external box might spend 90% of its life connected to a single "server," it is possible to walk it down the hall and connect it elsewhere if needed. Yes, I know about networking, NFS, Samba, NAS and similar technologies. Maybe this thread will break me of my "sneaker net" habits.

I know that drives are extremely reliable, but huge drives become a single point failure in my mind. Yes, there is "backup," but ...
I have a few large drives. I find that they soon take on the appearance of a file cabinet where things are stored under 'P' for papers. My brain can wrap around, organize and manage 500GB chunks fairly well. Yes, I could partition 2TB into 4x500GB or some other variant. However, it is still a single spindle that fails as a unit.

Cheers,
~~~ 0;-Dan