Building a new file server

[quatoria]

Hello All,
Here is the issue, hope you can throw some ideas my way.

I want to build a File server because I am downloading or storing far too much. I hold it all and rarely delete. I have three Pc's and a NAS on the network at home, most with filled drives. Probably close to to 2 TB's overall.

I have a Netgear NAS (NC101) which is filled but uses 2 IDE's in a silly and rare file format which limits what I can do with it. Added to that the technical issues they develop, and installing software on machines to see it. I want to therefore steer away from stand alone NAS.

I decided on going the whole hog and just buying a base unit and filling it with SATA 2. Because it will stand alone and not in use for great deals of time (night time etc) I want power saving to feature so I was thinking I might get Vista for it's power saving features. (The only thing that it actually has that I like) Possibly linux if I can find a case and mobo that handles power saving well.

Ideally Raiding a couple of drives as a network backup for core data (work etc) and the rest just as shares for the network. I am thinking low end spec' dual core. 1GB RAM so it at least will be future proof for a bit.

Any ideas / suggestions / advice on Cases, mobo's, low end dual cores. As many SATA's as possible.
Trying to keep costs low as well. I am still paying off the gaming machine I bought a few months back.

[Micky007]

Jesus what the hell are you downloading !

[Aaron]

If its literally just a fileserver, you shouldn't need much in the way of cpu etc performance. What I would be looking for in a motherboard for a large fileserver would be a gigabit NIC, and plenty of sata options.

For me CPU power would be a secondary thought after I had sorted those requirements out, although I would still try and get as good as I could just out of principle