[gentoo-user] Hard drive storage questions

[Dale]

Howdy to all,

I have a interesting problem coming up.  Currently, I have two 3TB
drives for my /home mount point.  A lot of this is videos but some pdf
files and other documents as well plus a photo collection of family
stuff etc. 

Filesystem                                   Size  Used Avail Use%
Mounted on
/dev/mapper/Home2-Home2        5.4T  3.7T  1.8T  68% /home

I've got a little over 25% or so of usable space left.  At that point or
shortly thereafter, it could start causing some issues according to what
I've read anyway.  Either way, shortly after that, being full will
certainly be a issue.  I'm full up on my motherboard SATA ports.  Even
if I buy a larger drive or drives, I'd have to unplug one to move things
over and likely repeat that a few times.  I could do that and likely
will have to anyway but I'm trying to think a little farther ahead. 
Currently I have the more important stuff backed up to a external single
6TB USB drive, previous thread on that.  I'm trying to come up with a
plan that allows me to grow easier and without having to worry about
running out of motherboard based ports. 

I thought about a store bought enclosure with more than one hard drive
that connects by ethernet.  The ones I've found are fairly expensive. 
Doing it over USB concerns me for other reasons, USB isn't always that
stable.  So, internal isn't working out to well long term.  Ethernet
based is expensive, what I could find anyway.  USB isn't that stable. 

I'm planning to upgrade my current system.  Upgrade the CPU, memory and
maybe even the video card as well.  I thought about using a older spare
motherboard, those removed components and building a mini system sort of
thing.  I could have one small drive for a OS and then add large drives
for storage.  Then I can access those from my main system, ethernet I
would guess.  Even then, I'd still be limited to the SATA ports on the
MOBO at some point but it would be a ways into the future.  So far tho,
this is one of the better ideas.  So far.  Does anyone else have other
ideas on how to do this?  Some method that I've never heard of but
doesn't cost a lot of money to do? 

Thanks in advance for any ideas.  I can't think of anything else.  ;-) 
If you need more info, let me know. 

Dale

:-)  :-)