Fileserver question - Dedicated / Part sizes ...?

Hi, Linux gurus especially plz ...

I'm the guy who's always trying a workaround (mentally if not in physical practice) for the expensive stuff these days. My latest project idea moving up to the forefront of necessity is a large-size set of storage drives all accessible at the same time - an NAS/fileserver for about 6Gbs from the last 20 yrs of repairs/etc..

I have about 15-20 different Linux distro Live CD/DVDs, and want to build a fileserver from a simple case, ps, cpu, etc ... or from a pre-made barebones from the local Microcenter (Boston, MA).

I'm having trouble accessing multiple larger drives on the SATA/IDE combined HP pavilion a6119h desktop I've been using for about 3 years for repairs, copyings, and recovering/wiping all my old harddrives. Currently has a 1.5 Tb w/4 partitions running Slacko Puppy that won't use other drives on SATA2. (Likely an issue with Slacko / nbr of partitions, but COULD be HP hardware/Vista designed system).

So, I'd *like to* throw the cash at a RAID-capable barebones fileserver with say both the 1.5 and 2 Tb drives, and 1 or 2 more refurbs I might pick up later. In the meantime I could use another DVD burner (maybe a Bluray) or a couple 250Gb drives, or one of each, etc. ... It would be a 10-bay tower case with a 750-watt power supply btw, and a current CPU/Mboard bundle.

QUESTION(s) : 1) Anybody know where to find a free tutorial / diagram set to do this already, 2) Are most Linux distros CAPABLE of these configs/RAID-ed drive capacities?, 3) When connecting to the fileserver's RAID-ed drives will Windows have a problem with the drivesizes of the RAID system or is it "handled" by the RAID subsystem before mounting over the network?. I'd be connecting with a variety of XP, Vista, and 7, as well as some Linux.

Thanks,

25+ Winyears, 2 scattered linux yrs.