All this media is filling my drives. I'm currently in the process of getting as much data backed up onto random hard drives around the house so I can destroy my two arrays and create a fresh, 10-drive (500GB's each) RAID5 array in Ubuntu Server edition. This will provide close to twice the space I have now and that equates to over 300 movies.
Has anyone else had any experience with Ubuntu's RAID5 server? I wanted to use FreeNAS really badly but it doesn't support my SATA cards I bought. My case holds 4 HDDs, 2 3.5" external, & 4 5.25" external...so it will hold all 10 drives. But, I need another drive for Ubuntu. I also want to see if I can add 2-5 more, smaller drives. If I can somehow secure them inside the case, they will be easy to hookup via PATA. They would be utilized purely for data backup from the RAID5 array.
I bet this will really speed things up compared to my USB raid setup. It will be interesting to see how things go. I've read a lot of info on setting it all up but nothing proves it right until I actually get it working. The necessary parts (cards, cables, etc.) will arrive early next week. It's going to be scary when I have all my data spread out around the house. I just finished burning the most important data to DVDs just in case.