Creating "Hot" archives

I have a client who wants to archive data, but also wants to be able to get to the data in a fashion quicker than loading it into a table from a regular archive or unload. One question I was asked was if data could be archived to onto a hot-pluggable drives and plugged in when needed. My thoughts on this is that it might be doable, but the following are issues. 1) Each archive would have to be in its own seperate table, say "jan-1997", "feb-1997", etc. The individual archive tables could not have the same names because each table would have chunk and reserve page information associated with it, which would be different for each set of data. 2) We would create file system symbolic links for each arvhive set/table, which would all point to the same hot-pluggable bay. When an arvchive table/chunk/drive was removed from the bay, it would simply be marked "down", since it is inaccessible, and marked back "up" when a drive was plugged back in. 3) For as long as we might wish to have access an archive's data, the table info would have to exist in the system tables (table could not be dropped), otherwise we would not be able to "re-mount" the table by plugging a drive into the bay because the DB administrative information would no longer exist. 4) This seems like a very cumbersome way to do things. Does anybody have better suggestions on how to accomplish the same? Could tables be mounted and unmounted on removable media such as Jaz, Syquest or Magneto-Optical drives??? TIA. -- * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ADDRESS ALTERED TO FOIL SPAMMERS: Remove "*NO-SPAM*" to reply. Cosmo Lee Multi-User Computer Systems Brooklyn, NY "JUST SAY 'NO' TO SPAM" * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *