I’m thinking of getting a new harddisk, so anybody knows what’s what in storage today?

I’m looking for something with room for at least 8 3.5″ SATA drives (SAS reminds me of my statistics course and that’s never a good thing) and iSCSI. I don’t need hot-swappability but simple RAID would be nice. Doesn’t need to be rack-mountable. I don’t need NAS functionality but don’t want a DAS box either.

It seems that consumer boxes that aren’t hilariously under-powered or mistakes RAID for RAID 0 are about the same price as real equipment. For example, I’ve found a Dell EqualLogic ps5000e with dual iSCSI RAID controllers, dual PSU and room for 16 3.5″ hot-swap SATA drives for €1000 + VAT. Or a Dell PowerVault MD3000i incl one controller for just €600 + VAT (that’s including mounting equipment for up to 15 drives).