Media Server and/or NAS Solutions

[Nolf-Job]

So I recently saw an article on wired about suggestions for media server/storage solutions. I'm curious what everyones setups around here are for entertainment and storage, as well as any suggestions of things that work well or issues to be aware of.

[Armo]

i use both a full blown machine as well as a NAS for data storage and backup. I got the NAS last week and i havnt quite gotten my modded xbox to connect to it. i just have to figure out what the account and password it uses to access samba shares with. i use an Intel SS4000-E NAS with 4 500gig hard drives set up in raid 5. i have service accounts with passwords to allow other people to have their own hidden shares, you can set disk quotas, have groups, it can interact with active directory, it has a partition backup utility, which ill never use. the NAS has a public folder which has read write access for everyone, including a guest account.

in my streaming media server, it runs windows XP Pro and i use an Areca 1230, with 8 300gig hard drives in raid 5. i set the machine up so everyone has read access but no write access, so by default the xbox can connect and stream no problem. i can have more than 5 or 6 streams from my machine, mostly over wirelessG no problem.

before i got my nas i exploded my raid on my main machine, loosing pretty much everything, so i got the NAS to use as a backup for important data.