Hi,

Another good line to look at is the Buffalo Linkstation and TeraStation. They all run linux, are eminently hackable, and are pretty cheap too, plus v quiet and low power. You do not need to leave a PC on all the time, just the NAS box.

http://www.linkstationwiki.net has all the info, plus there is an excellent forum as well at http://forum.linkstationwiki.net/

I have two (an LS2 MIPS, and an LS-Pro), both of which run Twonkymedia and FireFly to PCs, a Netgear MP101 and my 770 running Canola.

Cheers,

Alistair

Also Asus WL-500gP (or older gx) might be a good one. ~100$ wi-fi router with two usb 2.0 ports. Runs linux, has 266MHz MIPS cpu, 32MB RAM. You can add harddisk in external usb enclosure and share it over nfs or cifs. Can run twonkymedia too.

There is also plenty of similar hardware described in OpeWrt wiki http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware, watch for those with usb or ide interface

if you value the time you put into loading all your media I would highly recommend you consider a RAID 1 solution; at least if a hard drive fails you can rebuild from the mirror (hopefully). There are a number of units out there that will do the trick, however there are some (DLINK DNS323 comes to mind) that have some issues that you may want to avoid. Do yourself a favour and do alot of research before making your choice.

In my case I went with a HP mv2010 (300G drive) and upgraded it myself to 2x500G drives. Total cost was $CDN630 and I got a spare 300G SATA II drive to play with. I couldn't be happier with the quality and performance.

Geeez, so much to think about!!

I've been looking at the Buffalo Linkstation Live which looks the business, but the media server is "DLNA Certified". Is DLNA different to uPnP?

If it's the same I'll probably go with the Linkstation Live, if not I'll probably go with the MyBook World Edition mentioned earlier (Which has a feature list including uPnP, even though it's not listed in the user manual).

So, round 12, the decider, is DLNA different to uPnP?

Seeing as you asked, IMHO I would avoid the Mybook and go with the Buffalo Linkstation. Not sure of what configurations are available, but I'd look for a unit that has no hard drive and pick up a 500G Seagate drive (5 yrs warranties rule).

again, just my opinion...and we all know what they say about opinions

Yep, they're all welcome!! lol
To be honest, I'm at the point now where I just don't know which to go for.

I like the Mybook as it has remote access, and I'm 80% sure it's uPnP enabled.

I like the Linkstation Live which has built in support for media streaming, but I'm not sure it has uPnP (Has DLNA, whatever that is). I hear it's very hackable, but hacking isn't something I have any experience with so I'd like to avoid that if I can.

And then I like the Lacie Ethernet Mini as that has uPnP enabled.

Keep those opinions coming guys, it's one of those three and I trust YOU to choose!!! lol