Yes, this is the option I am going with first (lumping all disks into a single RAID 5 array). I believe keeping one as a hot spare leaves me with 10 working spindles - with any luck I'll be able to test with SQLIO and SQLIOsim in the next couple days.
Thanks for everyone's help!
______________________________________________________________________________Never argue with an idiot; Theyll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience