NAS

While looking for a much better long term solution to my ever expanding library of Music and video, I decided finally on a NAS device. While external HDs are nice, I needed something more permanant and robust and a "Network Attached Storage" device seemed the best option.
I went with a product called FreeNas. FreeNAS is a very basic Linux (BDS actually) OS that does really nothing but manage and serve a configuration of harddrives on even very old slow computers. As a PC hardware junkie I always have a few in various states of repair/upgrade, and so the bare bones PC configuration was not hard to put together.
I currently have it installed on a P3-800 w/ 256MB of ram and a couple of new 500GB WD Hds.
While it is possible to load and run the "OS" (about 60MB is needed) on a flash card or even a USB thumb drive, I went with the "stock" 10G HD as my BIOS did not offer these other exotic boot options w/o a special adapter ot two.
As I expand the storage capacity, (an undoubtable eventuality) I will go with a gadget that converts 2 of the 5.25" bays up top to a 3 bay HD "cartridge. Probably this one.
Included FTP server, RAID optins (which I do not use), Logical WEB interface and best of all, an included dynamic DNS updater for my zoneedit account.
Now I don't have to call home and have my wife run a whatismyip.com every time I want to remote access something on my home network. Now I can instead just go to amazingpowerplunger.com.