I have lots and lots of data. For a long time, I was just adding hard drives. Now, however, I have a real solution and it’s all beautifully implemented.

Until recently, my home computing environment consisted of:

• Dell Dimension 4400 (P4 2Ghz) that has been upgraded and tweaked extensively. It sports a 40GB main drive and three additional hard drives (120GB and 320GB internals and a 250GB external) I have been using for my storage needs. Other, less important for this post, tweaks include dual monitor and s-video support and 1GB RAM.
• 12-inch PowerBook G4 (now with 1.25GB RAM).

I knew I needed a real data storage solution when I had to start tossing files onto my PowerBook and the sense of urgency was created when my 250GB external drive started acting funny (about-to-die funny, not haha funny).

So here is what I used to build my file server:

• Antec P180B case: Gorgeous case that can hold a ton of drives. Has three fans and runs super quiet.
• Asus M2N-E Motherboard: Built on RAID and the giant case mean I can have two four-drive RAID-5 arrarys. Only aspect I don’t like is no built-on Firewire support.
• AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ chip
• Corsair 2x1GB DDR2 667mhz RAM
• Thermaltake Purepower 500W PSU
• cheap OEM internal DVD burner
• Diamond Radeon 7000 PCI 64MB video card: I just wanted a cheap video card that supports dual monitor and s-video.

I went with Windows XP Professional over the x64 version because of some driver and app problems and the only benefit is being able to use more than 4GB of memory. XP Pro rather than a Linux distro is used because I have a Linux curse and I actually do like XP Pro. The OS is installed on an 80GB primary HD, but all non-application data is saved on the 1.5TB RAID-5 array I built using four 500GB SATA 3Gb/s drives. After formating, the usable space on this array is 1.36TB; not too bad. I also shared the RAID so I can access it from my other computers.

Because this computer will sit in my living room–it doesn’t look bad, I promise–I tweaked XP to look nice on my TV (32 inch flat-screen CRT), which is great because I do not need a monitor imposing itself on my living room setup.

I used TweakUI on my other Windows machine so that all ‘special folders’ (e.g., My Documents) point to the RAID array. This is great because now when I open applications, it looks to my RAID array by default for the relevant files. As a result, I can store all of my files on the array seamlessly.

I also wanted to back up the data on my PowerBook so I installed iBackup, which seems limited but fairly good, to regularly copy my important data (e.g., e-mails) to the file server. I am having a little bit of trouble setting the PowerBook to automatically connect to the file server (via SMB), but I have not focused on fixing this yet.

There are only a few tasks left:

• Fix the PoweBook SMB connection to the file server so a connection is established on login/bootup
• Review p2p clients and maybe switch from Shareaza
• Buy another wireless keyboard (I have an extra wireless mouse)
• Test remoting in to the file server
• Hook up audio cables from file server to mixer/amp for watching video (music is currently played off main machine, which is wired into to two rooms/speakers)
• Possibly get this other machine I have, an old dual-P3 with SCSI drives, up and running for the bedroom