Thanks for the tip (yet another device I didn't know existed). The
rackmount hard drive enclosures I googled cost more than the system in
question. I guess I'll have to MacGyver something to keep my dirves
from sliding all over the place, unless you have another piece of
hardware up your sleeve.
I'm very ignorant, as you can tell, about technical computing. I
thought that a good system = good OS + good CPU + robust components. I
mean to say that although the functional design of each component (say
RAM, motherboard, etc) makes a difference, I just assumed that there's
not a huge amount of variation in performance of these components,
just in quality (endurance). Nobody needs to bother addressing this
statement, suffice it to say that one can know more than all the
people around him about something, and still know almost next to
nothing about the subject :)
Thank you all for the insightful discussion.
-Scott