In my last entry, I referred to but did not give the prices and sources of the parts for the RAID project. One disclaimer is that these are final prices and generally do not include either shipping or taxes. If I had looked a little longer, I probably could have shaved a little more off the prices. The enclosure kit is available cheaper at several places, but not in black. Total cost falls to less than $1000 if we do not buy a spare drive.
I was really tempted to go with the 250MB drives in order to say that I had a Terabyte drive array, but the cost benefit just was not worth it. Also, since I am planning to set the array up as a RAID Level 5, I would need almost 400GB per drive to allow for formatted size and parity data storage to give me a usable Terabyte array. Maybe some day.... As it is, I'll have 400GB+ of reliable storage.
Case: Antec SLK-3700BQE Black Quiet Super Mid Tower including a single fan 350W SmartPower ATX12V power supply and a single 120mm rear fan - $87.47 from eCOST.com
RAID Controller and Enclosure: Adaptec 2410SA Enclosure Kit with one Adaptec Serial ATA RAID 2410SA controller and one 90mm fan - $492.64 from PCnation.com
SATA Hard Drives: five Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160GB Serial ATA 7200RPM hard drives - $522.50 from ZipZoomfly.com (only four for operation, one for spare)
Total Cost - $1102.61