New install with a beefy system....but...

[Meabert]

Okay so I took my old gaming PC and want to turn it into a server.
Here's my config :
AMD X2 2.2ghz, 4GB RAM
NVIDIA 8800
3 SATA Drives :
1 7200RPM 160GB <- I want this to be my system "/" drive
2 5900RPM 1.5TB <- I would like this to be a RAID. I've tried doing them as one drive for my "/home" at 3.0TB and I've also tried no RAID 1.5TB each one for "/var" and one for "/home" and I've tried my nForce hardware RAID but when I go to format it gives me the red screen and I get initialization errors. Could a software RAID fix this? If so is it dangerous? Reliable?

Or is this not the problem?

I also have two IDE Drives connected.
I'm using the Ubuntu Server LIVE CD

[Rubberman]

I wouldn't use the 1.5TB discs with software RAID, but would do like I did with my 4x500GB discs and create a 3TB Logical Volume Group volume instead. That way you'll get the entire 3TB of space in one logical drive and can easily add more discs to the volume in the future should you need.