Considering a Media Server (Need hard drive, controller and p/s suggestions)

[PhoenixC5]

I have a huge collection of DVDs. I also travel 4-6 days a week on business. I also have 2 HTPC's. What I would like to do is to be able to watch any of them, any time, from anywhere (streaming). To do this I need a LOT of space to begin ripping them. I would like to maintain the DVD format and as much quality as possible. To do this, I would need at LEAST 2 TB of storage. And I want this to all be on one partition. :)

So, my questions are as follows:
What hard drives do you guys recommend (300GB+ SATA)?
What power supply would you guys recommend to power 8-16 drives?
What RAID controller would you guys recommend (RAID 5)?
And for grins, what case?

Keep in mind I don't want to spend more than $2000 on the setup and would like to phase it in. Start with 3 hard drives in RAID 5, then add 1-3 each month until I have everything ripped and ready to watch.

Thanks in advance.

[unhappy_mage]

I'd start with an Areca card, hands down. It's expensive - for the 16-port version, about $1000 (http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=areca++1260&btnG=Search+Froogle&show=dd), for example - but it's 16 ports of fast raid 5 on pci express.

Then add: a mobo with x16 on it, $150
processor, $150
1gb memory, $100
PCP&C psu, $200
Stacker case, $160
======
total: $1760 before hard drives. Buy 2 300gb maxline 3's, and expand from there.

Just thought of something - is $2k your goal overall, or for a start? If it's for a start, go with the above config; otherwise look into a lower-end raid card. You don't really need the performance for this application, and it's overkill.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072 (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=150072&tm=33)

[Slacker]

My roommate and I are doing the same thing basically. http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=961223 8 drive RAID 5 array with 400GB drives for a total of about 2.5TB formatted space. Just bought the first drive today because my external hard drive decided to get corrupted and I want to get the data off it now. That'll give us a few months for prices to drop until we start buying the next few drives and the controller card a HighPoint ROCKETRAID2220 http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=961223 Decided to go with these drives, WD Caviar RE2 WD4000YR 400GB http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=101254-1 The price break is currently at 300/320 but I figure by the time we start buying some more the price should fall. Plus it's about 500GB more total space with an 8 drive array then 300/320 drives. We're probably gonna have to get a new case/psu and possibly a new cpu/mobo combo. But it's a PCI-X card so it'll work in a normal PCI slot though there will be a performance hit. I don't think it will be enough to warrant a new mobo/cpu but we can always upgrade that later if it proves to be a significant bottleneck. I don't think this setup will have any problem streaming 3-4 video and audio streams simultaneously.