Well EV_Simon, a suppose your off to fry bigger fish now, and that's ok too. This may be iff-topic now, but I did find a 2007 laptop that had 3 drives: http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/31/targa-intros-raptor-60-laptop-with-three-hard-drives/ . I also see that there are "laptop hard drive cd/dvd caddy tray" that lets you replace a laptop CD/DVD with a SATA disk. Very cool! Must have had my head in the sand on that one for a coupe years.
I'll reply back if there's anything worth reporting on this new build (with regard to VMware that is.
Regards . . .