Cytocycle, why do you need to have up to 8 drives? That's the constraint that's causing it to be more expensive. You won't find an NAS with >4-5 drives at a reasonable price point. Commercial RAID racks are going to start in the couple thousand dollar range. The 3ware card is actually about your least expensive option given that constraint. If you are willing to be limited to 4 drives (1.5 TB using 4 500 GB drives in RAID 5), then try something like:
Tekram TR-834A PCI-X 133MHz/64bit SATA II Controller Card
I would advise against software RAID, because it's more difficult to configure and to recover, as well as being slower.
Michael
Tekram TR-834A PCI-X 133MHz/64bit SATA II Controller Card
I would advise against software RAID, because it's more difficult to configure and to recover, as well as being slower.
Michael