Deciding how to use my PCI slot

[iampaulb]

Don't forget that the machine has four USB3 ports, each of which is faster than a single SATA drive. External (or internal!) USB3 drives (carefully selected/configured so you're not using slow ones) should not be ignored in the search for more storage.

For example, I think you could take the two USB3 ports on the internal header and using one of the many internal header adapters around (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812240023), connect up two of these USB3/eSATA adapters. That would give you two eSATA ports (needing no special drivers to have hot-swap functions, and no PCIe card) and you could connect these to hot-swap bays at the front of your case. You'd need to tuck a bit of extra cabling away inside the case, but it gets you more I/O!

Sorry to be a noob but you have lost me, internal usb drives? sounds interesting

Well for my file system, i have the OS (separate ssd) and now currently i have 3TB

disk0: 120SSD - OSX
disk1: 1TB - Movies
disk2: 1TB - Music & TV
disk3: 1TB - Time Machine

Just looking on how to expand that a lot more really...the users dont really have a server share. But this would be a good option to have. there are 4 users, each could have 250Gb of a new drive. So speed isnt really any issue, as i use a WD TV Live to stream my movies and tv from the share. The rest is mostly storage or itunes server...

So with that revised idea i could have

disk0: 120SSD - OSx
disk1: 1TB - Movies
disk2: 1TB - Music & TV
disk3: 1TB - User Data
disk4: 4TB - Time Machine

These wouldnt be stripped. So if one goes hopefully id be able to replace and back up that drive from time machine.