Hokay, I have an idea for a media PC / NAS PC:
Build it to be as quiet & cool as possible, given the requirement to play HD video out into an HD TV.
To that end:
* One internal HD for the OS & apps
- Maybe two internals, software mirrored (maybe HW, if reasonable)
* Fewest large & quiet fans to do the job
* Full-tower case (to ensure airflow is not obstructed)
* Data storage is in external HDs
- Data requiring slow access, use USB (think MS Office docs, etc.)
- Data requiring faster access, use eSATA (video)
That's very similar to what I'm building now except my slowest data access is a USB external drive hanging off a Linux server on the network (smb share). The internal drive is the system and live data, any externally connected drives will be media and such.
BTW, I've noticed a lot of current mobos have built-in raid support (0 1 10 jbod typically).
Chris