Building a BIG server input please

[Khalil]

I am working on a project that will require around 28TB of space, I will need to increase it every 4 to 6 months by another 8TB.

I do not want to buy ready made so please don't suggest I buy Dell or HP, I can build better servers than what they sell because I am not limited on what hardware I can put in them.

I know what CPUs I am going to use, there are several motherboards I know will work as well.

The issue here is the 30 1TB Storage hard drives in raid 6.

I can go with a blade get up but I dont need more than 2 x 4 Core CPUs for what I am doing.

I am going to use 5 SAS 15K hard drives in raid 5 with an Intel Controller card for the OS and software.

I am looking for input on how to attach the 30 hard drives to the server.

I can put in up to 24 hotswap hard drives in some cases but what controlls them?
Do I build it like a server but make it a slave to the main server through firewire?

I am going to use Ubuntu 8.04 Server OS for this project.

[flanzig1]

I believe you can get hard drive extension cases that house just HDs. Probably will take some hard looking at commercial on-line sites to find then.