Wanting a small server...

[Platinum]

Originally Posted by styphon

But how much space do you need? Even a 500G external hard drive would be cheaper than 500G worth of hard drives in a server. Unless you need more than that, in which case go for the server.

Well ive got a terrabyte....

[styphon]

Originally Posted by Platinum

Well ive got a terrabyte....

Ok, fair enough then. Server it is. But if you're dealing in large quantities of data transfer you may want to get 1Gig ram.

[Nex]

Just a gig?

The price of it nowadays thats the min a machine id build would have in it.

Hell my office machine has 1.5gig in it.

[styphon]

Originally Posted by Nex

Just a gig?

The price of it nowadays thats the min a machine id build would have in it.

Hell my office machine has 1.5gig in it.

For a simple file server 1gig is plenty.

[olobley]

If it's only got to *serve* media, go as low spec & noise as possible...
The 1800XP with even 256 ram would probably be more than ample!
Also, if possible use 2000/2003 server (I know you can also tweak XP into doing it, but I'm lazy ), and RAID-5 the disks together (nothing is more annoying than trying to recreate 200Gb of media from backups when a drive dies).
Depending on the layout of the apartment (ie if you've got a cupboard or under-the-stairs closet you can stash the machine in), look at getting a Hauppauge MVP or similar thin client. We have one in each room and it's a really neat way of watching media files on the TV without all the faff of having a PC