As title says, how big can a git-annex repo be?

My use case is this:
I have a few external hard disks (like 2TB, 3TB etc) and each of them have a bunch of files. Ideally I would like to keep all of the data organized in a _single_ git annex repo. However, there are probably a handful of really big files and a LARGE number of really small files, and I doubt its a good idea to put all of them in together.

What should be my biggest concern? I assume file size is not a problem, and I should either tar/zip smaller files into much bigger ones and annex that, or split it up into multiple small annex repositories.

Any suggestions? What do the rest of you with similar amounts of data do?
