Hard Drive Expansion/Upgrade

Choices, choices! I am rapidly filling up my stock Maxtor 250 GB hard drive, and I need to upgrade. I've read most of the posts in this forum, and see many potential ways to go. Hopefully, some of you experienced power users can give me some guidance.
My needs/wants:
- Extra capacity. I have a large collection of transparencies I’m scanning. I think my needs (for the next couple of years) will be met with around 350 GB of storage.
- Backup. My (pathetic) backup routine has been to copy important data files to my Powerbook. I need a much more complete, robust, and systematic process for backup.
- Performance. Not a priority, but would be a nice benefit.
- Cost. Not a big deal, but I’d obviously like to save money if I can.
- Heat dissipation. My office is not air conditioned, and gets hot in the summer (90°+). The heat doesn’t bother me, but am afraid of what it might do to an insufficiently cooled drive.
- Space/clutter/convience. I prefer to keep all of my drives inside my G5, but will readily go with external drives if there are good reasons to do so.
Here’s what I’m currently thinking of doing:
Slot 1: Maxtor 72GB Raptor OS, applications (boot)
Slot 2: Hitachi 7K500 backup
Sonnet Tech G5 Jive
Aux 1: Maxtor 7Y250M0 (stock 250 GB) data (RAID 0 drive 1)
Aux 2: Maxtor DiamondMax 10/ 250 GB / 16MB data (RAID 0 drive 2)
Thoughts? Here are some of the things I’m wondering about:
- Will there be any issues pairing my stock Maxtor with a newer 16 MB Maxtor 250GB in a RAID 0 configuration?
- Will I have power or cooling issues with the G5 Jive and the RAID pair?
- Where is the best place to buy this stuff?
Thanks in advance!

MacGurus was always strong on SCSI, out of which the Burly came. Same with Seagate Cheetahs. Seagate may not be the fastest, but it usually is reliable and trouble-free regardless of chipset, controller, or OS. And some buy based on "quiet" or warranty. So you're right, they have.
Sonnet Tempo firmware has had trouble with Maxtor DM10/MLIII. Maxtor had a couple poor years, too, and the very first of the DM10 250GB models wouldn't even work on Macs. You could use a Maxtor utility on a PC, or RMA the drives. They also introduced staggered spin-up feature that doesn't work on all controllers, Sonnet had an issue with their 8-channel card and drives not showing up and RAID would keep failing. MacGurus carried Maxtor last winter, got burned, may come back.
Hitachi had a couple 7K250 models, noted on Barefeats, that had SSC and didn't work on SeriTek but would on Sonnet. The new 7K250 and T7K250 are fine. The 7K400 was not native SATA drive and also had SSC (OWC carries a non-SSC version of this drive, though the 7K500 is just plain superior now).
What has happened with SATA is a lot of changes being introduced and not everyone is on the 'same page' and 'qualifying' their equipment - the end user gets that job I guess.
No one ever lost a job in IT, the saying goes, for recommending IBM mainframes and DASD. Sometimes their mid-range and below wasn't the best, but once IBM was in a shop, they had great support and engineers to help you with your planning and upgrades - long-term commitment and relationship with a vendor, I could be sure of prices, support, and know the equipment.
A lot of people might be turned off by Granite Digital's SCSI costs. I swear by them (tried low costs solutions and threw them away) so I have a large investment in SCSI cables and such. Running four 15K drives, drive coolers, hefty PSU and fans, dedicated UPS.
IBM name took a big hit in storage, what with the 75GXP "deathstars" and poorer performance of their SCSI drives compared to Maxtor, Seagate (and Fujitsu but Fuji drives don't always work in FibreChannel and Mac systems I think). IBM still uses an extra platter as 'spare' so they can still map out bad blocks and get good yields, but their SCSI drives are hotter and louder than others) but any server farm is going to be in a noisy room where that shouldn't be a matter, and is climate controlled).
I keep my drives in a small, cool room - noise and heat are not a problem. Just like cooling an MDD, you look for how much air the fans in a case push, whether it has room for bay coolers, or has front and back fans, as well.
People want their external drive tower to be 'fashionable' and 'color coordinated' to their Gx Mac. I use to buy cases from www.hypermicro.com - CiDesign mainly because they are well made, metal, good cooling characteristics - but they have scaled back, harder to compete in today's market with cheaper products that can drive out even the good ones.

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