Is this possible?
 

I currently have about twelve 500-2tb drives all via usb 2.0 and w was wondering if it was possible to connect these to a lan switch and then possibly connect it to a router then to the home network, instead of going to it through say my HTPC.

Also how do I go about setting up a file/folder on my pc for sharing over the network? say I have a folder on this PC called "movies with a bunch of movies on it and want to share it with everyone on the network? How does I do that.

What do you mean through? You need some sort of operating system to access and/or network the hard drives. You can't connect a hard drive directly to a network switch, unless said switch has the capability to access a hard drive's file system.

A switch does not have this technology at all (at least to my knowledge for consumer grade stuff) as all it does is repeat/forward whatever it gets, its a dumb machine. Whereas a router is a smart machine and can do this (usually 1 USB port limited to a 1.5-2.0TB external usb HDD)

You'd really only be able to get one of them on there, and even still i can't imagine the transfer rates are overly spectacular due to USB 2.0 controllers that are used to communicate/interface with a router with usb capabilities or a PC.

You really should be building yourself a dedicated server or a NAS.

That's just a mess I don't even want to think about.....

I think what you are looking for is a NAS(Network attached storage).
You can convert a regular pc into one.
If you got a old PC lying around, you can setup a NAS and connect it to your network.
I have never built one myself, but try googling for it.

yeah you need a few hubs but look how many drives can a single os handle.

hooked up a bunch at the last meeting via hubs(to a pc),wasnt pretty but it worked

edit to answer ya question,no. goes to pc,then outwards towards whatever.

take an empty case, build it as a PC, put all the drives on some sata adapters, you will need some, maybe 2-3 with 4 sata ports each, and just share all of them over the nework, as a file server. If you don't want 12 partitions you might want to create JBOD partitions (unite the capacity of multiple drives under a single one without creating a RAID matrix). You might want to get cards with different controllers, will be easier to configure.

It's not what he tries to do on 3 or 4 treads? If I remember well last time he have 4 cards, few cage and he was looking for a motherboard.

It is possible but the equipment for it is pretty expensive and usually intended for a commercial environment, not sure if there is any of that equipment in the affordable home user price bracket or availability. Not to mention that since they typically use a stripped down and modified version of linux it would be inconvenient for customisation.
Basically, like a couple of guys have said already, your best bet is to make a really cheap computer and just whack all the HDD's in. From there you can just connect it via network and use windows in-built file sharing

OHGOD.

As the others said, you're better off to just build a fileserver/NAS to do this dirtywork. It'll be cheaper and way more efficient.