SnoutWeezel

Hi, hopefully some experienced people here can help a noob out ... Am building a new NAS server for home, where usage will be mainly laptop backups and media streaming storage. I like the ZFS concept so had intended to use RAIDz, but in any case RAID5 or equivalent under some system. Have MB = Asus E35M1-I, with 1x PCI-e 2.0 x16 slot [wired for 4 lanes electrically] into which I want to plug a card to support 8x SATA2 HDD and am trying to decide between IBM BR10i and M1015, which are both readily available as new system-pulls on EBay for about the same money. Critical for my intended application is that the HDDs can spindown after XX [programmable] minutes of inactivity so the machine can go to silent standby. Q1: Will either of those cards in IT-mode support this function? Q2: How would this be implemented in practice, respectively? Q3: Due to my having only 4 PCI-e lanes to connect to, would the M1015 be any faster/better than the other if I stay with SATA2 drives of max. 2TB? Q4: Which OS or system is advisable for someone with modest Linux skills to administer?