I considered that option, but as far as I could find out, that would force the SATA controller in to RAID mode, making it impossible for ZFS (I use ZFS, too) to

I considered that option, but as far as I could find out, that would force the SATA controller in to RAID mode, making it impossible for ZFS (I use ZFS, too) to get at the SMART data from the disks. My server runs FreeBSD, and I have restricted the ZFS ARC to 8GB, so I have some RAM left for the other stuff, performance has been okay for me. Then again, a) a home network with about half a dozen client devices is not that big a challenge, and b) due to a combination of laziness and stupidity, my home network still is 100MBit, so I do not have to worry about any bottlenecks on the server. ;-)