JLA can also just keep the entire directory compressed, if he's using Win7/vista and has the disk partitioned into an NTFS volume. That way, the files are compressed but readily available and can be watched without unzipping (the time needed to access them is negligible/nonexistent with today's hardware.)
The only trouble is that if he has the kind of media files (e.g. mp4, mkv, wmv, and normal ones that have very low quality) since don't really benefit that well from compression because they already have some sort of compression.
Also, I, too, have several TB of porn spread out across several volumes.
