Help me with what to purchase.

StephenB wrote:

You don't need to separate music and data/video on separate drives. You will get more space if you use a single XRAID-2 volume. With 6x3TB drives, you can get 15 TB of total space, your structuring only gives you 12 TB. Alternatively you can get 12 TB with dual redundancy with a single volume - which is stronger protection than the raid-1 + raid-5 scheme, and offers the same space. Backup of course is needed no matter how you structure the disks.

I just worry about array failure with that option. My thinking was to back-up my data on external WD Green drives and keep 'em stashed outside my home. The data doesn't change that frequently, so it could work.

StephenB wrote:
Accessing the media on the road through streaming can be problematic, especially with DLNA. You'd want a VPN router for the best performance. ReadyNAS remote can be to unpredictable. Since you are transcoding on the fly you would need something like plex. If you are planning to also transcode video later on, you would want a pro-6 or a 516.

I have a DLNA enabled Samsung Blu-Ray player which should serve, for now. I'm planning on setting up a htpc box as well, since the DLNA mode on the blu-ray player is lacking. Specifically with my test-rips with embedded subtitles in .mkv files the player cannot display them. Nor will it let me use the chapters correctly, so I figure a small htpc would do that job nicely for me, with a remote attached. With a blu-ray drive it should be able to replace my blu-ray player entirely.
I'm thinking of locating some sort of media centre build which will allow me to have a home-library on display, which supports the functions I'm looking for as well. It would then pull the library from the NAS.

I've got an older model HP homeserver at present, on to which I've managed to force an installation of Ubuntu. I've upgraded it's celeron CPU to a c2d E5400, and it features four drive bays. I was looking at the ReadyNAS as an alternative to this for its ease of use.. but if it severely limits my options I might reconsider actually using this homeserver instead. It's a HP EX490 MediaSmart. The only issue is that it requires me to use one drivebay for system operation, which naturally will decrease the storage potential of the thing.