Suggest a Shell/Hardware for me!

I'm interested in purchasing a computer for the sole purpose of supporting multiple harddrives. I'd like the ability to have probably 10 harddrives, ATA and SATA. I assume I would need a controller card for each... but I'm not sure if there is a motherboard out there that would do that for me. I'm not so much interested in processing speed or memory on this particular PC... so that isn't a priority. Also, what OS would you suggest to do this?

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by LiquidAcid

Get a mainboard with a SATA controller and four ports. Then get two additional SATA controllers for PCI express. Each one with 4 ports (that's standard). And voila, you can connect 12 harddrives to your system.

OS: Some linux with samba support. Or how do you wanna have access to the files? SCP/SFTP?

I'm not sure about accessing them... and I haven't used Linux much, so I'm undecided on that.

What about a case for it all though? A lot of the ones I see on newegg don't support that many drives. I dont want them just hanging all over the place lol.

Most amazing jew boots

Originally Posted by LiquidAcid

So you wanna setup a headless machine with Windows? Have fun

I don't want it to be headless (I'm assuming you mean without a monitor, therefor 100% accessible through networking), I still want it to have basic functions like internet browsing and word processing, I just want a motherboard and a case that can handle a lot of harddrives (necessary mounting, cooling, space). So I guess what I'm looking for is a large case with a lot of harddrive mounts, a power supply that can handle those, and a motherboard that has a few PCI slots for 2-3 controller cards. I can't seem to find a case that fits this description on newegg, and I'm not sure whether to go with PCI or PCI Express slots, or really what the advantages are, and will a regular PCI card fit into a PCI Express slot? I guess the first step is finding a case though.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.