eSATA is pretty limited. A miniSAS card and external will be more, but you will get more throughput. I really like the specs on the Areca 1223x, but the ATTO R680 is highly touted by ppl here on the Cow. I've used Areca and they do have really nice speeds in RAID-5 & 6. From conversing with Jon Schilling, Cow member from Proavio, he has pretty good price on 8-bay external and Areca 1223x combo (including cables) that gets 900-1000 MB/s. Check out the Arrays and Raid Setup Forum -
http://forums.creativecow.net/raid
Good Luck!
TC
