speaking of great cars... my 93 Taurus rocks my socks off.
I was looking at getting a hardware raid instead of using the softraid...my issue is pretty simple, in windows my softraid functions and rebuilt fine on a simulated lost drive, it didn't panic, and fully loaded the drive after being placed back in (after I wiped the extracted drive first, of course)
Last time I checked Linux with my server box as I said it mounted the raid as one drive but couldn't read it. before I get all worked up, I'm going to try the newest version of ubuntu server see if I get a better response...I can't do this for at least a day as a friend needs some repairs done to his box...and I committed to that. Well seeing as I don't sleep much (not since I seen that flash in the sky on my birthday)

I may get a chance to try it out today to just see if I can read/write the drive.
As far as the distro to make the all in one linux super network box. I was leaning towards Debian as I liked it as a desktop all be it more sloppy, and slow then vector.
I know what your talking about with bit torrent...its just me personally I've never really used it for ... lets say completely kosher uses. Only in the last year have I been using it and not breaking any "rules" if you catch my drift.
Back to the server...The issues that come into play with the switch, are one I'm going into that unknown kind of place, and I'm don't want to compromise the safety of my data (obviously I'll have it backed up off the server prior to attempting anything.
Another problem is I don't know what will happen if I loose a drive in Linux will the array rebuild automatically or with minimal commands?
Would it be worth upgrading to a hardware raid card?
I researched a bit a few months back and found only one sata raid 5 capable expansion card compatable with a 32-bit pci slot. The product is an
Intel RAID Controller its for a 64-bit slot but says it is backward compatible to a 32-bit slot. Though going from 66Mhz down to 33Mhz may not be too bad as the server isn't really under heavy load, I called the store and asked if anyone had more info than I already knew from my research, I got referred to Intel...which I haven't called yet, as I'm sure they'll give me the brush off as the store did. My buddy has a hardware specialist he uses for his company (not for Linux though) he said he'd inquire as to how much of a performance read/write I'd loose using this kind of card in a lesser slot.
Ok those being the logistical issues.
How could I configure my distro to give me the best bang for my buck but not open it up to external attack? Of the ones I could build this with which do you figure is the most locked down?