I believe you forgot to mention about 5.1 .As you know With vSphere 5.1 you can "Migrate" virtual machines live without needing “Shared Storage"
If you want to be specific..
Read the question I replied to again. If his plan is to unplug some hard disks and physically move them, nothing involving ESXi 5.1 will allow this to happen online.
Then again, this is the problem with thread hijackthing, because your point is totally accurate to the ORIGINAL question this thread is about.