[tlug] options when running out of external connectors

[Gernot Hassenpflug <aikishugyo@example.com>]

Dear all,

I am in the position of having accumulated too many hard drives, and
wondering what is technically the best solution for this, given that
the hard drives I have are external USB drives of 500 GiB or 1 TeB in
size, and I have already gotten one 3-port USB card for my PC and have
filled my 4 internal SATA connectors and single internal ATAPI
connector.

What I have considered are in order of "ease of acquisition" to ease
this hard disk proliferation:

1) Terastation to reduce connections to PC (or directly to router) and
transfer data from existing USB drives to this, followed by disposing
of said drives;

2) addition of more USB-port cards (as far as slots allow);

3) replacement of motherboard with one having more USB ports (may
entail also buying RAM, although processor may continue to be usable);

4) replacement of motherboard with one having both more USB and more
internal SATA (and possible external eSATA) ports (ditto above);

5) living with the situation until I come up with another solution.

Costs are not the dominant concern here: space and ease of access
(including for disk replacement) have quite high priority too. I'm
most leaning towards choice 1) at the moment, but if anyone has
specific merits/demerits they'd like to mention, please feel
free---also, if there are solutions I have not yet thought of.

Many thanks,
-- 
Gernot Hassenpflug