nice configuration,
but there is a point with unprotected disks to be tested:

I used this configuration under NT4 and tried to pull out one of the
unprotected disks out.
While this would probably cause no harm to TSM,
the operating system itself froze completly (for hours, so not an I/O
time-out issue only)

You may become different results using different disk controller or using
nt2000, or aix etc.
but you will have to test it.

regards
Juraj