content: Well, the amount of storage is only limited to the data ports (2 SATA, 2 IDE channels, one floppy channel, one SCSI 68 pin (I believe it is, so a theoretical 15 drives, unless it's setup in some odd config))... so whatever I can cram sidewards into the case and connect to all those, and the power supply can handle it. The only reason for the RAID would be to have something like two IDE 500gig drives or something working as 1tera or whatever for the local storage before the tape write begins.  And, once the tape write is done, the local backup can be deleted, no problem there.  And, I've dealt with the harddrive as the only copy issue before... lost the only copy of three concerts (and only copy of two original studio recordings), and since then, have learned to burn  to appropriate media first, edit from the HDD later. I'm sure there are more efficient ways to do this, what I'm aiming for is... drop some drive(s) in the Dell, set something up to copy stuff from ma's machine (I have full rights to their machine... no admin password crap to worry about... I built it) to the tape machine maybe weekly (or set it to copy stuff when it changes, or some mix), have a thing running on my computer locally to do the same thing (my WiFi and cable modem will soon be on a UPS, and if it's not too much, maybe the Dell, so then stability won't be much of an issue) as far as dumping data to the Dell... and like bi-weekly or monthly, the Dell writes to tape.  Ideally, the Dell would end up being a headless machine (after setup, tuck it in a corner and it does it's thing... have it run BOINC and maybe mine coin when it's not busy with the backup stuff), possibly give it a Lilliput-style display for info, probably hard-wired into the network and VNC into it or something for control and status. I'm planning to give Veeam a real look this weekend... as long as I can find software that can see a/the tape drive, the whole thing could be handled over FTP or something, as long as both ends could do everything without me sitting there for four hours poking and prodding crap.  I'll test it on this computer's Seagate Travan 10/20 drive and see how it handles it (not a true test of it, I know, but until I can find something to use on the Dell, it wouldn't really be worth it to throw money at the Dell only to find what I want to do is impossible).