Well the idea of setting up an HP Microserver really appealed to my techie side so I went for it. Got the server with a £100 rebate and got a couple of 1TB disks to get me going.

Set it up last night. My first impression is that it is a little bigger than I expected. Had to come up with another corner to locate it but the build quality is good and the disks slid in with no issues.

Decided to try openmediavault as a starting point. The GUI looked easy to follow and it suggests it will do everything I require. Installed it to a 4Gb USB key to use as the boot drive and everything is purring along nicely.

Set up software raid in less than a minute and created shares for music, pictures etc.

Windows machines found and attached to it no problem. My Ubuntu laptop took a bit of coaxing but after a few tweaks to Samba it is also merrily streaming music and accessing the shares.

I'm undecided about the noise coming from the fans. It is in the lounge at the moment and I notice it but the wife says she can't hear it. That's all that matters I suppose!

Thanks again for all the advice. Gave me plenty of food for thought. The flexibility of the server and my penchant for tinkering won out in the end.

Could always get some better fans, though good quality "silent" ones are not cheap. Or a fan controller to slow them down a bit if heat is not an issue.