Re: Media Server Help.

[Rob Heyes <mh001b4520@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

d>  1 I need a case that can take a lot of drives but stay relatively
d>  cheap so as not to alarm SWMBO!

I have a CoolerMaster CMStacker :-

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=123852

Note that this doesn't have a PSU - I have two PSUs in mine each with
a 120mm fan.  The case has 11 5.25" drive bays, but if you use
CoolerMaster's 4 into 3 cages you can install 4 3.5" drives into a
3-bay space.  The case comes with one of these and you can fit two
more.  That will give you space for 12 hard drives and a DVD drive and
a floppy drive. Each 4-into-3 has a 120mm fan for cooling.  My case is
has a total of 6 120mm fans and is whisper quiet.  There's also a bit
of future proofing since the case can be converted between ATX and the
new BTX motherboard format.  The only downside is that the case is
very heavy, but it is well built.

d>  2 I have a few 250 G drives that I want to use, and a few others of
d>  various sizes. I need to build an array that will allow me to add to
d>  it eventually letting me have TB's of storage.

d>  3 I know I need to use RAID (I guess) but don't know much about it.

I have an Adaptec 2810SA card in mine and 8 SATA drives in a RAID 5 array.
Highpoint do a cheaper card, but I've not heard any good stories about
them. I think that 3ware cards are supposed to be good, but can be
hard to find.  Good RAID cards aren't cheap - you'll want one that has
the XOR hardware on the card, the cheaper ones use the normal CPU.

I'd definitely recommend using SATA rather than ATA mostly because of
the cabling.

--
Best regards,
Rob                            mailto:rob.heyes@xxxxxxx