Building my first FreeNAS

[Rusky]

I decided it's time to upgrade my external hard drive to something a little more robust

My needs are backup and a place to store and stream my media, I have about 1TB of data

I have a spare HP z420 that I will use with 8gb of ram
http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04111468.pdf?ver=7

I have 4x 500GB hard drives, 8x 256GB SSDs

What do you suggest for a Raid type?
What are some good uses for the SSDs?

Thanks in advance for any input