Help!! Need Media Server with Good/Stable OS

[Bwizzy]

I've been using WHS for a little while now. It acts kinda finicky at times. And it just recently crash on me for the 2nd time. The 1st time is was the OS HDD that failed. The HDD was about 2 years old, so it was within it parameters to fail. This time its the mobo that has failed. Soooo.......... I was using:
ASUS A6N Premium mobo
Athlon 64 X2
2GB DDR (yeah, its old aint it?)
High Point Tech RAID Controller 2 SAS connections
x4 (1TB HDD)
x4(1.5TB HDD)
x6 (2TB HDD)
7600 GT video card

Now, the new configuration is going to be:
ASUS P5QL-EM mobo
intel Celeron E3300
2GB DDR2
High Point Tech RAID Controller 2 SAS connections
x4 (1TB HDD)
x4(1.5TB HDD)
x6 (2TB HDD)

Alright, now my questions are:
1. Has anyone ever don a configuration like/close to this kind
2. What is a good alternative to WHS? WHS was an OEM, I'm going to haggle with Microsoft and see if they'll show me some mercy
3. Can you point me to a guide to assemble/install configure this? I have an idea, but I just wanna have something to compare it to.

Thank you for your time and attention..

[Soopafresh]

Better be careful when you reassign the raid arrays on the new system. That's about the only thing I'd really worry about. I'd look at a Gigabyte Mobo, the ASUS units have been less stable than they were in the old days.

[Bwizzy]

On the previous motherboard (A8N SLI Premium) I had issues with the RAID controller being seated properly a lot. I would have to shut it down after restarting it from getting updates from Microsoft. But other than that, I've had a pretty good history with ASUS. Now WHS on the other hand, has been a headache more than the motherboard.
I would get random file conflict messages whenever I would store a ripped disc/BD on the server. But it wouldn't be any conflict at all. And backing up my information would be a friggin beast. For example, I would start copying my 2.5 TB anime collection to my backup drives and it would say 260 minutes till complete. I'd let the server do its thing and I'd walk away. 2 hours later I would come back and it would stop the copying process because of a thumbnail or random file could not be copied. Its very frustrating. I would have to go into the folder and find that single friggin file and delete or whatever I would have to do with it and start the whole process from where the PC left off at.
And as you can see, I have a lot of storage space. Doing back ups for my server is a beast in all its entirety, but I do it cause I like everything I have saved on there. I just need and OS that's tailored to my needs. Don't get me wrong, WHS is quite nice, but it can be better.

[edDV]

I'm using the HP Mediasmart Server (WHS+HP mods) for backup and compressed file storage/network access. As such, speed isn't an issue. I do have it connected with Gigabit Ethernet but it isn't designed for fast editing access.

Why are you using RAID and SAS? Are you trying to use it as an editing video server? There are many specialized SDI video servers out there.

[Bwizzy]

Actually the RAID controller has SAS connections. The SAS connectors have spaghetti connectors that connect to the RAID drives. Like a SAS to SATA connectors. Thats how why I can have so many drives connected at once. I'm slowly phasing out drives that are smaller than 1TB. I did like how I could set up utorrents webGUI on the server. I'm thinking about still going with WHS on the new build. But my decision isn't final until I'm convinced I have no other choice. I still wanna try some flavor of Linux and see how that works out.