Windows 8 Planning...I need a strategy!

Hello!

Oh this is far too long. I apologize. But I'm excited at the possibility here...

I just purchased the 2-for-1 upgrade to TIH 2012 and while I was here, I downloaded the latest update to ADD 11.

My system is an aging but still competent Q6600 quad core machine. I plan to upgrade it to a Sandy or Ivy Bridge machine later this year. In the meantime, I can support four SATA devices from the internal SATA headers (one is my DVD drive), and this weekend, I'll be installing a PCIE card that will add two internal SATA headers and two external eSATA headers.

I use this machine to support several "systems" as follows.

System 1. My main "production rig" is a dual-boot Windows 7 system. I'm using the Windows bootloader, But I think I want to use Acronis OS Selector. One side is for office, video, graphics, photo, web authoring, and games use, and the other side is for music making. This system currently spans two hard drives. The music sample libraries take up over a TB. I am currently working on a project to get some data/download and my commercial media libraries moved to a NAS device so that I can reduce the footprint of "System 1" to something under 2 GB.

System 2. Separate from that, I have a hard drive with a Linux boot on it. I use this for testing and learning 64 Studio on Linux. Due to other time commitments, it's been a long time since I've done anything with this system, but I don't want to get rid of it just yet.

Systems 3 and 4. Separate from those, I have a couple hard drives with Windows/XP and another couple for Windows Vista. I use these for testing old versions of various web browsers, and for debugging friends' broken or virused hard drives. They're old systems that I no longer use on a day-to-day basis, so I plan to completely reinstall Windows for these at some point soon so that their footprints aren't so big.

The dual boot "system 1" is currently my main system, and this is where I do most of my work. Systems 2, 3, and 4 are sometimes image-backed up with TIH Boot Media, but are not really considered critical. If I were to lose one, I'd just reinstall that OS to another spare drive someplace rather than try to recover any contents from a backup. I sort of think of these as my "poor-man's VM" systems.

Systems 1, 2, 3, and 4 above are currently all managed by way of removable SATA hard drives. For example, when I am doing office stuff, the Linux, XP, and Vista hard drives are all sitting on a shelf in a closet so that they won't catch the flu.

New Project.

And now I want to install a Windows 8 RP (Release Preview) system for testing and evaluation. Sometime around the end of the year, I expect to rebuild "System 1" above to make it a dual-boot Win 8 system. Some time after that, I'll create a "System 5" with a basic Windows 7 installation on it.

But things are getting a bit unwieldy with all these hard drives...

Question 1

Can I combine the Linux, Windows XP, Vista, and 7 systems onto one 2 TB or 3 TB drive and manage them all with Acronis OS Selector? If so, that would greatly simplify my life.

And...to extend that thought:

Question 2

Can I build a multi-multi-boot system with the following characteristics (with OS Selector)?

Drive layout...

Drive 1 - SSD: Dual-boot Windows 8 system on a single 240 GB SSD.
Drive 2 - HDD: Swap partitions, Office and DAW application executables and partitions for office data and music content data that I create. Intended to be accessed only by the OSs on Drive 1.

Drive 3 - HDD as described in Question 1 above, containing OSs for basic Linux, Win XP, Vista, and 7 systems, and partitions for apps and data.

Desired boot options:

1. Use Win 8 with only Drive 1 and Drive 2 installed?
2. Boot to any OS on Drive 3 when only Drive 3 is installed?
3. Boot to any OS on Drive 1 or 3 when Drives 1, 2, and 3 are all installed?

I actually want 1, 2, AND 3, because this would allow me to make these three hard drives internal and only use the swap-bay for backups or diagnosis of foreign drives.

Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. In the meantime, I am going to go play now and install a basic Windows 8 system... :D