[GaryRW]

Yeah - I like FreeNAS. It was very easy to setup on the old dell. a couple hours absolute max iirc, and a think most of that was trying to find a spare power lead. The only problem at the moment is that it apparently doesn't support wake on lan or automatically powering down the computer after non use. You can set timed power-off on a schedule, and looks like you can do clever scripting if you know how. But if I can't wake it up remotely, not much help if I've got to go up in the loft to turn it back on.

I guess my view is that the Dell seems overkill to house one IDE drive (currently an old 160gb drive I had spare), and I don't feel I can justify the 24/7 power for it. I turn it on at the moment purely for backup of our photos once every week or so.

the server on ebuyer presumably uses similar-ish power (???) but feels more worthwhile if it can house 2 or more decent sized sata drives and store video files as well.

I'm hoping that with a new build, I can try a full on linux solution which would do wake on lan and auto power off, so I would have best of both worlds. Would take a bit of time to set up as I've never used linux, but hey, I'll enjoy learning it.

Anyway, sorry for sidetracking with probably too much info. I'm still looking around, and so far I think that ebuyer one is the best value.