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Creating a server or home server might seem like a challenging undertaking at first, but once you grasp the numerous benefits it brings, along with the occasional debugging adventures, it turns into a rewarding hobby—trust me, you'll be rolling up your sleeves for some troubleshooting fun :^)
For me the primary reasons were threefold,
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Before I begin, I’ll confess I had already setup a temporary server a while back, so this isn’t exactly learning from scratch for me. However, this time around, I’m setting up everything ground up, starting from bare metal.
The choice to buy two HDDs (Hard Disk Drives) was to connect them in RAID 1 (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), to allow for failsafe operation. RAID 1(Redundant Array of Independent Disks) basically mirrors the data across drives so if one crashes or fails, the system can boot from other regularly.
Setting up the hardware was fairly basic, connected the HDDS internally through SATA connectors, removed the DVD reader to make place for the second HDD. Screwed them back in. (removed the original HDD, OfCourse). Slotted in the RAM stick in the alternative slot on the motherboard, and bolted the machine shut.
Of the plethora of operating systems available, I narrowed down on Ubuntu Server, a distro (distribution) of Linux an Open-Source OS. Reasons were plenty, but mainly ease of use and wider compatibility. Also, inbuilt bootable software raid support.