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The units you listed (at least the first few) look like a drive cage inside an external enclosure. I do not know where you can buy one of those pre-assembled, but you can get the three major parts easily enough and just put it together yourself.

5 drive cage (built in raid - IDE/SATA with IDE drives):
http://areca.us/products/html/ide-ide.htm

1394 to IDE bridge board:
http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg19_firewir ebridgeboards.htm

external 4 drive enclosure:
http://www.macgurus.com/productpages/scsi/mgscsien closures.php

if you don't already have drives, you could look here:
http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/Category.asp?Cat egory=15

Alternately, you could get the areca unit and mount it inside the computer - just check that you have 3 free 5.25" drive bays without any protrusions.

I recently picked up one of the SCSI to SATA areca raid units and it has worked well so far - one of the fans went south, and they are shipping out a new one.

is the only choice for reliability, performance and cost effectiveness. yeah, you can build one for much cheaper using ATA/serial ATA, but for longevity and reliability, SCSI is still the best bet.

look for mylex raid controllers, or if your looking on ebay, consider CMD (5000 series or greater) as a fall back option. i don't recommend chapprel.

if you're gonna do it on the cheap consider the firewire raid solutions from wiebetech or granite digital.

We use Granite Digital firewire drives here at work for backup purposes. There is no reason why this wouldn't work for your needs, just throw the drive into the caddy, and then slide it into the external bay, then when you are done unmount it and take it out of the caddy. They have external arrays also so you could do more than one drive at a time.

--g

I back up close to 300GB on a nightly basis using GraniteDigital's FIRE Vue(TM) FireWire 1394 IDE Ultra ATA Systems

I have 6 120GB Maxtor's and rotate them nightly, storing them in a fireproof safe, rated for paper storage. Granted, if a fire occurs, I'm not sure if the data storage would survive, but I think that would be the least of my worries, at that point. The Firewire works great and is very fast.

I back up close to 300GB on a nightly basis using GraniteDigital's FIRE Vue(TM) FireWire 1394 IDE Ultra ATA Systems

I have 6 120GB Maxtor's and rotate them nightly, storing them in a fireproof safe, rated for paper storage. Granted, if a fire occurs, I'm not sure if the data storage would survive, but I think that would be the least of my worries, at that point. The Firewire works great and is very fast.

For my current network setup, I have a server that uses GraniteDigital's Hot Swap Firewire solution. It is a drive enclosure that has a removable tray that you can stick an IDE drive (any size) into and backup across the Firewire connection. Has Linux and Windows drivers. Very reliable, fast and cheap, with hard drive prices constantly plummeting.

For my current network setup, I have a server that uses GraniteDigital's Hot Swap Firewire solution. It is a drive enclosure that has a removable tray that you can stick an IDE drive (any size) into and backup across the Firewire connection. Has Linux and Windows drivers. Very reliable, fast and cheap, with hard drive prices constantly plummeting.

Are there any Firewire or USB Hard Drives that are of mobile rack format? I would like to have hot swappable storage, but not with an external box. Mobile rack would be nice.