This will be my 3rd system build, but still so much to know. Forgive the long post:

The new IT director at work is a Dell devotee, not interested in continuing the practice of building servers as needed. So I offered to take an unused SuperMicro PDSMA+ server board and server case off their hands. Here's what I have tentatively planned for it:
Intel Xeon 3075 2.66GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core
4 x Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM 667 (PC2 5300) ECC Unbuffered

Onboard video is probably fine for now...no gaming in my future. I suspect what I'll do with it is load up a 64-bit flavor of Linux (this will be a new exercise for me), and then VMWare on top of that, then various Windows operating systems to play around with. So it'll be a test/play machine, but also it will be the file server for the house (lots of itunes files, lots of photographs). I'll probably put a nice sound card in here and hook it into the stereo (I have thousands of CDs and records to digitize).

My questions:
When it comes to hard drives, my first thought was 4 SATA drives in a RAID 5 array, but I don't know if the overhead of RAID 5 is sensible for a home setting. Perhaps I should start with 2 large SATA drives in a RAID 1 hardware array, and have room for a second RAID 1 array if needed down the road.

Any thoughts on that? Is hardware RAID the way to go? Any thoughts on using a server board in a home setting like this? The price is definitely right, but am I crazy to even think of using a such an overpowered server board in a home setting when I'll probably barely get it breathing hard? I've spent a week solid thinking about all of my options, and I've developed option paralysis. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Most server motherboards are 771 not 775 make sure its works.

Get 2x 2GB vs 4x 1GB

If you get a RAID 5 card, it would be just fine. A bunch much probably. A lot of motherboards now support RAID 0+1 which is basically the same thing as 5 except it requires 4 drives vs 3.

Hardware RAID certainly seems OS/onboard solutions, but it probably overkill for a home application.

Hardware raid is definitely the way to go... if you can afford it. Cards that will actually provide a good performance boost tend to be on the expensive side for home use ($500+). I'd use the onboard raid to start, go to an external card if you really need it.

Just double checked...it is listed as a server motherboard, but it's 775, and calls for the Xeon 3200 / 3000 series. What characteristics must be present before they call it a "Server motherboard?"

Thanks for the advice on 2GB RAM - I'll price that out and probably take your advice.

I guess RAID for a home application is overkill, but I've been reluctant to digitize my music without pretty careful redundancy and backup plans. Here's the hardware spec:
Built-in SATA ICH7R Controller
4x SATA (3 Gbps) Drive with
RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 Support

I'm still not sure of the best hard drive/RAID configuration, given that I have two purposes - running multiple OS with VMWare and storing/playing an awful lot of music files.

Raid is definitely NOT overkill for home application... my file/app server is hardware raid5 (Ciprico Raidcore SATA). The last thing you want is to lose all your family pictures or your music collection because of a hard drive crash. I didn't worry about it for my PDC (it's a PITA to rebuild but not the end of the world) but for a file server I wanted an additional layer of protection.


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