ill give you a bit of an update, even tho it hasn't totally been finished yet.
Im using a Gigabit switch to connect my house up using CAT 6 cables, this should allow the network to run at full gigabit speeds so i can run the HD movies over the network and have enough bandwidth to not cause any slow downs.
I'm not running any RAID on my server, mainly because most of the data i have on the media server i have on backup discs eg, DVDs and so forth, my music is backed up as well so i dont' really have a need for RAID, i have considered but haven't jumped into it yet, was considering trying windows home server tho.
With the I-RAM from what i have read the battery isn't really an issue. From what i have heard is that because the computer always has power even when its off the battery doesn't kick in so if the computer is off , there is still enough charge to keep the OS/Iram in tack , the only time you have issues if the computer is physically unplugged form the wall or there is a blackout for more than say 20 hours. Then the memory will discharge the contents and i will loose my OS and have to reinstall.
So its really only a problem if i move the computer and forget to plug it back in.
The main reason i haven't done the USB key which would be a lot cheaper are the reasons below. i may be wrong but im pretty sure i read most of this online.
Reason 1 - I heard that the read and write speeds of USB keys weren't to crash hot, heard they were lowere than HDDs. And much lower than I-RAM.
Reason 2 - I had a few DDR ram sticks lying around as spare , so i found IRAM as a solution to this by using the spare DDR chips.
Hope to post some pictures of the build, and yep i do have the IRAM already