Server Question

[jdm]

I want to building a server for my family. I have 4 people in my family(that is includeing me too). All of us use Itunes and all of us have Ipods. I want to building a server that can hold all of our docs., music, pics., and video. I want to be able to put all of that on it then have Itunes look at it so that the individual computers don't have the music and videos but itunes and see it and so the user the music. I'm thinking of buying a computer then buy a case and switching the cases so that I can have room for hard drives. I have a copy of xp pro(legal too) that I can put on the server. The most hard drives that will be in it is 4 maybe 5. Here is the list of what I'm thinking of having in the server:

a dvd burner

1 boot hard drive

3 other hard drives

I'm not planning on having it all built at once. The biggest hard drive in it will be 500 gb. Can you help me out. Thanks

[nitti]

here is a wide choice with several scenerios.

brax

[isteve]

You don't really need to build a computer to serve files. There are a lot of cool network storage drives that all you have to do is connect them to your router. I don't know to much about them I'm sure someone here could be more help if you want to consider this option.

I just got a apple extreme N base station that has a built in print/storage server. I just plugged in a usb 2 hard drive and serve itunes movies and music.

[sethook]

I threw a HDD in one of these NAS devices to use for storage, auto backups, and file sharing on my network.

[lefty1953]

I want to building a server for my family. I have 4 people in my family(that is includeing me too). All of us use Itunes and all of us have Ipods. I want to building a server that can hold all of our docs., music, pics., and video. I want to be able to put all of that on it then have Itunes look at it so that the individual computers don't have the music and videos but itunes and see it and so the user the music. I'm thinking of buying a computer then buy a case and switching the cases so that I can have room for hard drives. I have a copy of xp pro(legal too) that I can put on the server. The most hard drives that will be in it is 4 maybe 5. Here is the list of what I'm thinking of having in the server:

a dvd burner

1 boot hard drive

3 other hard drives

I'm not planning on having it all built at once. The biggest hard drive in it will be 500 gb. Can you help me out. Thanks

I would like another said, just buy External USB HDD's. I have a MY BOOK 160GB drive that was less than $100. If you buy a PC with say 6 USB ports that should SERVE you nicely? No Pun intended. Just assign each drive letter to each person in the family.

[jdm]

I do have a couple of external hard drives but my computers get confuse with them since they are the same model. I was thinking of doing a server because everything will be in one place and I can play music off of it. Thanks for the help.

[shanenin]

do you plan on using linux or windows? Linux would be nice, you could fully admin it from windows using putty(a way to login to linux). The cool part is you do not even need a moniter.

[jdm]

I'm looking at xp pro right now since I have a copy at home and I'm better with windows. If that doen't work then I will do linux. I'm okay with linux but not the best. I'm looking at xp pro because my dad doesn't want to do linux and because I can run my own itunes on it and not have to share the xp home computer that my brother uses for my itunes. Any suggestions for setting it up and hardware. Thanks for the help.

[shanenin]

I would consider using a raid 5 array . If you have multiple hardrives in the system, and one fails, you will not loose info; it is also a very fast way to serve files.