1Gbs NAS vs eSATA

[Nick Burns]

I'm considering adding more storage strictly for recording shows. Which would be better: a 1Gbs RAID NAS or an attached RAID eSATA storage?

[pwlong]

Depends on what you mean by 'better'.
If better means "faster", then eSATA access times (purportedly on par with SATA) would most likely be generally quicker than most NAS devices, even one with 7200RPM drives on a gigabit LAN. For BTV video folders, though, data access times aren't that important.
If better means "ease of installation", it depends on your existing BTV server hardware: do you have an eSATA port onboard? If not, you'll need one, or a port multiplier (like this one (http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sahpm-e.asp), or even this one (http://www.cooldrives.com/cosapomubrso.html)) of you want a single cable between server and the external chassis.
If better means "cheaper", you can build a darn inexpensive NAS box using any old chassis, spare drives and FreeNAS/NASlite or Linux.
If better means "more future-proofed", that's a tough call, since both NAS devices and eSATA cabinets are likely to increase in popularity among both consumers and vendors.
If better means "more expandable", "more reliable" or "simpler to setup", those measurements are pretty subjective and depend alot on who's managing them.What I would do if I were in your position: I've already got several Linux machines acting as NAS devices (Samba/NFS), so I'd probably explore the eSATA option, if for no other reason than it would be a good opportunity to learn about the technology.