Help with building media server.

Here's the deal. I've been amassing thousands of hours of HD video for a few years now and I've reached a point where I need to build something to handle all of it (and most of it doesn't have a backup at the moment ). I would say that I've got around 8 TB of video data and a couple of TB in random data I'd also like to backup. I'll need some room to grow as well.


I'm reasonably comfortable with computers and have integrated my place and built a couple of PCs, but a server would be a new venture for me. I have an older desktop (5yrs) crammed full of hard drives serving as my media center for the moment. It is running Win 7 and Plex as the "media center" part of it, though that's really to benefit my family because I prefer having access to the video files and using another player.


I've been looking into possibly using ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX building from there with some WD Reds and going with a Free BSD and ZFS file system running a RAID-Z2. That OS and file system will be new to me but I'm willing to learn. This would be a stand alone system. I have other systems that would need to access it for the data and it would only need to be able to handle a couple of HD transcode streams for the family.


I'd welcome some input on this because it's all new to me. Also, I'm not married to the above plan so if someone is aware of an all-in-one solution or another build I should undertake, then I'm more than happy to listen. I'm hoping to keep this in the ~$2k range (if possible, but I know the HDs are probably going to be the main factor in that).


Thanks.