I've got a load of old IDE drives, and a PC I want to use as a filestore/dev-server for my loft. Can I chuck them all in, and will Ubuntu allow them to be used as one huge drive, or do I have to leave them as little drives? Cheers.
I'd recommend to use them normally as separate drives, but there is a way to make them a single drive. RAID has the level called JBOD.
You could use LVM (http://www.suse.com/en/whitepapers/lvm/lvm1.html) to span any number of disks, which can be different sizes. It's available on the alternative install cd. However: if you lose one disk, you lose all data, or at least the time you need to replace the disk and restore your backup. If you need data security, invest in a raid controller and setup raid5.
I'd recommend keeping them all as seperate drives. Unless you want data security then you could look at RAID1 or 5 as an option. If you only really intend to use it as a file server then take a look at freeNAS as an alternative to linux. Also look into putting your OS on a flash device, this frees up all 4 of your drives for storage and if you want to update the OS its easier without any fear of data loss.
