Critique away!

[sdspieg]

I'd like to set up a NAS (for multimedia and backup) with old components I still have lying around:
* an MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum mobo with 4 gigs of RAM (this has a PCIe)
* an Athlon 64 3000 CPU
* an old ATX tower with a 450W power supply
* a whole bunch of old drives

I also bought a Highpoint RocketRAID 2720SGL 8-Port PCI-Express 2.0 x8 SAS/SATA RAID Controller (which, according to one thread here, should work with FreeNAS) with 2 miniSAS to 4 SATA cables.

Now here are my questions:
* could I just add a bunch of drives internally (I first thought about an external enclosure, but those are expensive too - and I really don't see what the big deal is about NOT being able to hot-swap drives)?
* will I have enough power for all (possibly 8) drives?
* does anybody know where I could find INTERNAL enclosures? My current tower will hold 4 drives, but what if I wanted to add 4 more? I certainly have anough space in it, but I don't seem to be able to find any of those. Maybe I'm using the wrong word?
* any other suggestions for the (hard/software) configuration?

Thanks much,

-Stephan

 

[decapyre]

Quick comment on the MSI board. I have an old MSI K8N Neo (v1 I believe?) and it won't boot off of USB. Instead I need to boot off of CD running a bootloader that runs off of my usb stick. Sort of a hassle but your board is a bit newer. Something to maybe check out with the board, just a thought.