> Indeed.
> NTFS can apparently meld multiple drives under the same 
> drive letter - even non RAID-hardware connected independent 
> drives apparently. I haven't tried this and don't know the 
> details of how it works.
>
>
>
>         Russell
>
>   

NTFS supports softlinking (undocumented largley) where you can basically 
make a directory on disk C come from a directory on disk G say.

co c:\program files\games == g:\games_main
or something along those lines. You need 3rd party tools to do it. 
BEWARE DELETING STUFF THAT HAS BEEN SOFTLINKED. Mostly it doesn't work 
like you would expect.
You can also format bare partitions and mount them into the file system 
(somewhat like linux) so the drive is mounted into c:\fotos
You have to do all this stuff through logical disk manager.

If you upgrade your disks (non boot though I think) to dynamic volumes 
then i believe you can get "just a bunch of disks" storage increase mode.

You might think about making a virtual machine and giving it a bunch of 
blank ide disks to play with until you get the hang of what you want to do.

Your other option if you are doing things in batches as it sounds like 
you are is do it more like a jukebox.
Get something that supports external SATA. Get a new drive for each 
project (the small ones are really quite cheap). Then see if you can get 
one of the foam boxes that they ship drives in bulk in. Hold like 30 
hard drives in a nice styrofoam box each in their own little compartment.
Write info on the drives on the side in grease pencil or something like 
that with a date on them.
Wipe the data over a certain age if you want to use it again.

Stuff thats important to you, keep it on a RAID 5 storage system somewhere.
Keep in mind that you don't need to keep RAID storage online either. I 
have some data in a RAID5 array (3x 320gb drives) that i keep in a 
closet until i need something off it ;->


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