[ale] what to do with dozens of 40GB IDE drives?

[Christopher Bergeron]

Hey guys -

I just took ownership of 25 (to 50) brand new 40 GB Hard Disk drives, 
and I have no clue what to do with them.  I run an LTSP shop ( ltsp 
rocks! ), so my machines don't need HD's.  I optimized the hell out of 
them as much as I can (they're running dnetc/seti clients, etc).  I just 
realized that I have dozens of 40GB drives that aren't even being 
powered up, and I'm trying to figure out how to put them to good use.  
I'd like to create a fileserver array, but I'm not sure where to begin.  
I've looked at NFS, but the LTSP clients network boot over NFS, so I 
don't want to over complicate the network by having the clients act as 
NFS servers too.

Does anyone know of any hardware that I can plug 'lots' of IDE drives 
into?  I've looked at SAN / Disk Array solutions but they all seem to 
ship WITH drives.  I'd love to find a 12 or 15 disk case and backplane 
that I can populate with my own IDE drives.  Does such a beast exist?

Also, before/if it's suggested, I've already designated several of these 
drives for charity.

Your guys' thoughts?   What would you do with 40 40GB IDE drives?

Thanks again,
CB