RAID Replacement/Upgrade

[Blues]

Looking for recommendations for an external RAID box.

Here are the requirements and intended use:
At least 2 Drives
Must Support RAID 1 if supporting 4+ drive RAID 01/10
Will house main documents for main PC and media files for streaming on local network and possibly over the web down the road.

I am figuring either eSATA or USB3 as they are both supported on system it will connect to. As I understand it USB3 has a slightly higher top speed however the drives won't hit that as well eSATA can provide a constant speed. The only draw back is that I believe the system will need to support a particular feature to use RAID over eSATA can anyone confirm and elaborate on this. The application used for the streaming is PLEX I don't know that this will impact anything but in case it does.

This will be replacing an on board RAID that has had 1 drive fail recently.

 

[Markverhyden]

Why don't you want to use a NAS device instead of direct connect? Far more flexibility in my book. At any rate, FreeNAS does have a PLEX plugin. FreeNAS can be installed on pretty much any old desktop.

 

[Blues]

I would need to build a dedicated box for a FreeNAS system and what I have seen on most NAS devices it they have limited playback for HD quality video due to the processing power required so a USB/eSATA would better suit me. There is also the matter of cost the current parts I am looking at are ~$300 for 2x 2TB drives and an enclosure.

Vantec NST-400MX-S3R
Seagate Ironwolf 2TB NAS Drive

 

[Diggs]

We discussed a bit recently here-

https://www.technibble.com/forums/threads/external-usb-3-x-raid-enclosure.74779/#post-596484

 

[Blues]

Thanks left a remark on there it does help some so far I think I am sticking with the equipment I am looking at just need to figure if I can use eSATA w/ RAID or if I need to get a card to enable that.