Home Storage Server - need some advice

[Lightning98]

Don't know if this fits in this part of the forum but i didn't know where else to put it

I built, a small home server like 4 months ago, so i leaned something there but when i started planing a bit more storage it went out of my league

Don't know how you'd classify a server, but what it would be meant to do is simply store file and be able to share them across 4-6 computers in my house. Also i'd like to be able to run an FTP or HTTP server off it if i need to (but that's more of a software side than hardware).

I have a lot of work files which i need to keep backed up at least 2 years (company policy for working on stuff at home), my kids download a bunch of stuff all the time so i'd like to keep that in one place, a lot of family pictures, videos. Basically i need a lot of storage, and i also need to be 100% sure i will not loose the data.

Here's the components i was thinking:
- Any S775 motherboard with 2x full PCI-E x16 slots
- Any Intel Dual Core CPU, something in the middle
- 4 GB Corsair RAM
- Integrated GPU or the cheapest low power card availabile


The idea behind RAID 6 as far as i get it is availability, meaning if i loose 2 drives i can replace them and continue working. So i was thinking of getting 2 identical 8 drive controllers and hooking up 8 drives to each of them.
Drives would be either WD Green Power 2TB or the upcoming Seagate 2TB Green power. But I'm about 80% sure I'll go WD.

So that would be 6 drives of real capacity giving me about 11TB of storage on both arrays.
The reasoning behind this is that i have 2 identical arrays with an identical set of data on it. I'd keep one drive set in my company's server room (probably the safest place to keep it since its cold and secure from fire and all...) and sync the data say once a week (or 2 weeks).

And with 2 identical controllers i'd have a bit of a buffer if one of them fails. Also for verifying i do MD5 checksums on everything so...


I'd love to hear any thoughts on this, so any kind of advice is welcome

Some things i'm wondering:
- Do i really need RAID6 with this? or would RAID5 be good enough so i don't loose one more drive for parity
- Would it be better to get one 16 port controller or just on the safe side take 2 identical 8 port ones
- Would it be better to build 2 separate computers and sync them up via Gigabit LAN?
- Do i really wanna build this myself or should i look on soem prebuilt servers with redundant PSU's and all


Oh well, i'm not building this like today, will probably wait about 2 months untill the 2TB drives get about 20% cheaper so its not like very urgent... but like i said ANY advice is welcome.

Thanx,
Tom.