Mobo with 8+ Sata ports

The ASRock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 has 10 SATA ports and is compatible with Ivy Bridge processors so you'd have plenty of room for expansion later. You didn't list a budget or any other projected specs--if you describe your goal a little more I could list better recommendations.

Servers are fun >;]

Awesome thanks, budget is around 2k but that's easily bendable either way. Ive been told by others before for a multimedia server i wont need server parts but can use desktop. I am happy either way to use server or desktop parts it really doesn't matter to me. What ever will benefit the server more for reliably and longevity is what i am after. Hoping to have it running for 6 - 8 years 24/7. I am intel fan boy but as i said before id prefer to go with what ever is the most reliable.not sure if hexcore, quad core or dual core is fine so im open to what ever opinions and suggestions i can get.

Are you planning on running these in RAID5? Even if you just want a JBOD configuration a discrete controller is really the way to go when you're talking about this many drives. Something along the lines of LSI 9240-8i Kit $294.99 would be a good starting point.

To be honest ive never read into raid or used it or really know anything about it. I understand that with raid your running two drives and formatting them as 1 ?? if i am correct ? What are the advantages to using raid ??

I'm no RAID expert by far, but yes you're taking multiple disks and treating them as a single volume. The advantage you're seeking here is redundancy and data loss prevention as well as performance increase.

In RAID5 you get both mirroring (data redundancy) and striping (performance increase) and you do it at only the loss of 1 drives capacity. If you were running 8 1TB drives you'd have a total capacity of 7TB that would be treated as a sinlgle volume. In the case of drive failure you'd lose no data.

RAID6 is similiar to RAID5 but offers better performance at the cost of two of the drives capacity. 8TB would be 6TB, but again you'd have redundancy and improved striping performance.

First, on a media server CPU/Drive speeds aren't very important especially in a home environment. Second, while the Z68 Extreme7 has 10 SATA ports their a smorgasbord and cannot be in any RAID more than 4 drives; crossing controller types and some oddball software (OS) RAID would end in a disaster. Onboard RAID (5 or 10) for your purposes is fine if you can get the TB's needed.

If you want 8TB then IMO look for a NAS solution with 2TB HDD's e.g. NETGEAR RNDU6000-100NAS

Otherwise as mentioned JBOD or you can build your own, but to find a non-server case with 6+ hotswaps are few and far between. In that instance you'll definitely need a Dedicated RAID Card (LSI, Adaptec or Intel).

Without reinventing the wheel last week I posted an 8TB NAS configuration -> http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/304198-30-motherboard...

You can use consumer parts, no hotswap, RAID Card and simply pitch a bunch of HDD's into some PC case...

Look at Gigabyte boards. They have more options and ports than any other manufacturer.

Not on 1155. Asrock is the only manufacturer currently offering 10 and 12 SATA port options. These are available on the Extreme7 as mentioned, but also on the P67 Extreme6 and the Fatal1ty.

It's not true on 2011 either. While the Gigabyte UD3/UD5 both offer 10 ports, the Asrock Extreme7 and Extreme9 offer 11 ports. The Asrocks also have the advantage of having 2x Marvel 9220 controllers vs the 3x 9172 of Gigabyte. The advantage here is that the 9220 is based on x4 pci-e lanes vs the x1 lanes of the 9172.

Either way it's a really poor way to setup 8 disks. You're going to be spreading those disks across a minimum of 3 different controllers by two different manufacturers at very different bandwidth speeds.

Just seems to me that at this number of disks a discrete controller is the way to go. While the initial investment will be higher, the knowledge that your data is safe is a very nice luxury especially when you're talking about having 8 drives at a time when HDD QC is at an all-time low.

ASRock Z68 Extreme7 ; limited to a 4 drive RAID - http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=Z68%20Extre...
ASRock X79 Extreme9 ; limited to a 4 drive RAID - http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=X79%20Extre...
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD5-B3 ; limited to a 4 drive RAID - http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3...
(too many UD's to guess which one)

As stated, OS RAID's across multiple Chipset Controller is an accident waiting to happen.

IMO - (as stated) "NAS solution with 2TB HDD's e.g. NETGEAR RNDU6000-100NAS" or similar setup.

Not with ZFS!
You sould really do some homework before advising...

Cheers
LK