Good point on the expandability, Alex. I was considering going with 3TB drives to have a full 18TB of useable storage. I’m thinking that’s enough but these days you never know. The iStorage Pro unit that I mentioned above is expandable for about twice the price of the Areca. Definitely something to take into account.
Rainer, I’ve also used a Sonnet array (Fusion 800 I think) which has been pretty good aside from the bundled r380 card failing once and having a loose drive cable another time. But overall, speed and reliability were pretty good. Definitely hoping to hit a lower price point though.