Hard drive film/music storage

["noel_pilot" <HA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey all,
Next probably stupid newbie question!!

Im looking into my plans for a media server and Im trying to estimate
the kind of storage I'm going to need.  Planning on putting all dvds
onto a hard drive together with many tv shows and all future movies
and footage!

So....what are my options?

In my head I have this idea of some kind of drive setup that appears
as one drive but actually spans across multiple drives. i.e. a number
of 200+Gb drives with dvds and tv shows on that all appear when I
click on one drive symbol or navigate to one area.

Have heard a lot about RAID but my limited understanding is thats a
more redundancy thing??!!

Advice on this be greatly appreciated, Am open to consideration of NAS
ideas but like the idea of being able to add drives at will!

As always cost is an issue, so cheaper the better!!!

Many Thanks

Noel