Other World Computing has a number of
RAID enclosures. I have
this one and installed four factory rebuilt 7,200 RPM HGST 1 TB disk drives for a net 3 TB of storage (the reduced capacity is the result of the data that permits rebuilding any one of the four drives should it fail. The whole thing mounts as a single volume. It is virtually silent and just sits there and does its thing with zero effort on my part.
The 1 TB drives are the largest capacity 7,200 RPM 2.5" drives available. For my purposes I could have gone with higher capacity 5,400 RPM drives and any speed loss would only have been noticeable when running benchmark programs but I didn't really need the extra capacity. I figure that at some point, when prices get low enough, I will replace the spinning rust drives with potentially higher capacity SSDs in the same enclosure and that should be faster than virtually any external buss can deliver and maybe even faster than the internal data buss in my Mac mini.
FULL DISCLOSURE I have no pecuniary relationship with Other World Computing other than that of a user of their products.
