7200 might be a good idea for streaming data, but you probably don't need a RAID-1 setup for a media server. Save some money and just get the one drive, or offload the RAID duty to a backup server.

Ok, so I'll go with a 7200rpm drive. My concerns were both motor noise and power usage. As for RAID 1, I'm lazy and RAID 1 is instant backup. I could buy an external drive, but that costs more, or I could stick it in my PC, but then I actually have to back it up. As I said, this media server will be hosting my home videos, and I really don't want to lose those.

I have three 7200rpm drives in my comp, and I never hear them.

Granted, I also have a lot of fans that are very noticeable, so that could help as well.

I'd highly recommend using one of Shuttle's bare-bones PCs as a starting point. They're small, quiet, and surprisingly upgradeable. For your uses, I'd recommend this one - it has a replaceable DVD drive for when you want to upgrade to Blu-Ray, two internal 3.5" bays for your HDDs, a couple of eSATA bays, two low-profile PCI ports (one vanilla PCI, one X16), and built-in TOSLINK and coaxial digital audio, all running off of a measley 400W PSU that's (in my experience) whisper-quiet.

Just throw in a cheap Core 2 Duo, an equally cheap-ass low-profile graphics card w/HDMI, a stick of RAM, and a hard drive of your choice, and you're good to go.

For HTPCs, AMD's CPUs are generally a lot superior since you don't need to buy a discrete GPU in the first place, and you can get a lot more value too. =\

if anything go with a raid 0 setup on the hdd's, a couple of 400gb, and you'll have double the read write speeds, and if it will be running constantly a server hdd will be of benefit, also make sure what you get will have a gigabit ethernet port.

I had raid 0 before and one of the drives failed, I'd rather go with raid 5 or 0+1 if I wanted more speed, but I don't think I need extra speed. I think if I don't go raid 1, I'll go with a backup drive that I manually run to save energy.

The barebones system seems a little expensive to me. I can probably buy all the same parts and put it together myself for $50 less. Also, it doesn't look like it comes with built in graphics, so I'd have to spend more for that. Unless I'm missing something about the box that gives it more value.

Does anyone have experience with linux based media servers, or should I go with XP?

I've been using Windows 7 for media stuffs, it works great. Don't know about XP, though.

I would suggest a faster CPU as the modern codecs and video files are too much for a simple single core to cope with. You'd be better off with one of the low power dual core cpus.

then all the files you want to backup just set the archive bit on it and perform nightly incremental backups and a full backup every 2 weeks. give it a second disc for the backup and it will backup just the data you need and not waste with system files, and run raid 0 on the discs so you will have what you need in case of failure and the improved performance.