First time building a server, lots of questions.

Ok I am going to try and keep this as short and informative as I can. I am getting ready to set up at least 2 to 3 computers in my home. I want to setup a server to hold all my files (mostly video, but pictures, rars, docs, etc) and obviously share them with the other computers. Im going to have to set up a network I assume, I have not done anything with networking in years and never was proficient in it. Most of the computers are going to be used for web browsing and to watch the video i have stored on the server, with one of the computer being used for that and gaming(my rig). I want to use some sort of RAID setup to keep backup for my data on the server incase a drive goes down. Before going into too much detail I guess these are my initial questions:

1. What OS or systems would be best for all this(including the file server), and can i mix and match(say one computer is vista the rest are xp.)?

2. I have a wireless router and currently have cable internet. What am I going to need to not only share that, but create the network as well? (ie: hub and cable is all or ....?)

I have plenty more but I'll start there just to see what I'm getting myself into. Please if you need more info feel free to ask. Thanks in advance.

1) Some form of linux for the server IMO, largely because that is what it is built for. You can mix and match all you like, for serving things to windows you'll want a server that can do windows shares. I believe most linux distributions out there support it natively, i know Ubuntu does.

2) You can do the whole setup wireless if you want to, or if you have some wired ports on the hub you can do all wired, or a combination of the two. Wireless is slower (bout half the speed, unless you're using wireless-N), so personally i would do wired for what you can.


Raid wise, for data safety you'd want either raid1 (two identical drives storing one drive worth of data) or raid5 (3+ drives storing 2+ drives worth of data). I haven't done raid in about a decade, so someone else is going to have to help on that front)

If you're not good with Linux (ie never touched it or barely) then I would suggest using Windows Home Server. I read on here that it is made for such file/media sharing and it is more of a 'set it and forget it' OS for media sharing.

yeah im not too keen on getting into linux. if its the best route then ill do it but otherwise id like to avoid it. im also wondering if it will b worth it to get a raid card or just use onboard? im not looking to do anything to quickly but i dont want my videos to be skipping and stuttering. the only other semi intesive task it will be unraring large files (6-10gb) to networked computers from time to time. i planned to do a wired network and i assume i can just get wireless cards for the computers or possibly connect the modem directly to the network hub or something. this is where i get confused. everything needs to be connected to the server and the internet. do i connect the modem to the server then server to hub or......?