I can tell you about transition metal complexes that bear hydrid ligands, which are used in homogeneous catalysis.
They can be prepared by hydride transfer. e.g. reaction of M-X (where M is the metal and X a halide) with a hydride donor (NaBH4, super hydride derivatives, etc...) which I think is the simplest way to generate these kind of species. Super hydrides actually work well as I have used it to generate efficiently nickel-hydride species.
You can also generate Metal-hydride complexes by alpha or beta hydride elimination of a ligand from the metal or, they can also be synthesized by reaction with molecular hydrogen.
About the metal hydrids that contain only metal and hydrogen atoms, I cannot really help you since this belongs more to materials chemistry I guess (I am thinkig about nickel hydride batteries for instance).