It may make sense from game-play(and even that is debatable) but its not logically in any way.
Let me explain, because the drive is 1 block it should in theory be possible to wire it in such a way that all the drives are seen as 1 and thus take only 1 channel.
Why would chests take up 1 channel and the drive not if the drive would be the most easy one for this to be the case?
It's a game, making sense to the gameplay is all that's required. Realism and logic is irrelevant.
This system gives an earlier game use to the ME chest and pushes the more "powerful" drive later in the gameplay, how things in most games work, you don't get a rocket launcher before a knife.
Excessive subnetworking has disadvantages, as I've pointed out elsewhere. My current storage system has 16 drives half filled with formatted storage cells. That would be...80 channels to be expanded to 160? And I actually plan on expanding. Getting this to work required some redesign from my earlier systems because of the channels but that was OK. Your suggestion would make it basically impossible to work.
I agree that finding a use for the ME chest would be nice, but not at the price of making everything else non-feasible. That's exactly the wrong way to go about this. Also, AE2 is already a mid-game mod - late-game in some packs even - its main features don't need to be pushed back any further.
I have 60 drives(with about 10 pre-formatted cells) using one channel. With the new system, still 60 drives and one channel, just a lot more thinking required to do the subnetworks. Just because you don't know how to do it doesn't make the system "impossible"
It doesn't push AE back, just the drive which is incredibly boring and OP to be able to plonk down day 2. The crafting and channel system adds a great progression element, I'd like to see the same with the storage.
And obviously this change couldn't be pushed on existing worlds as it would completely screw everyone. But that's my point, the only way to play AE is to use the drives(trust me I've tried with chests), I'd like to see some alternatives and there's one waiting to be used.
@rhn(sorry on mobile and quote went mad), yes they can be used for that but as a storage mechanism they're completely invalidated by the drive, that's bad game design imho.