I have 3 windows XP boxes on my network, sales, TV, development, a mac, and a VME crate as well as our public web server, and database server. Well keeping track of where which file was got to be a nightmare.
So our search was on to buy or build a NAS or Network Attached Storage system. Well I went to our local electronics store, and looked around... where I found and rejected the following
and I rejected them out right as I have 4 drives about 500gb each with movies, and lots of other crap.
Then I looked a Microsoft Home Server and rejected it. as I does not play well with my Sun Microsystems Solaris Ultra 3 servers. And then I had a flash, a good old kick in the pants...
Hey I have a lowend P3 box 1.5ghz and .5 gb memory, so I started to look for some software, free if possible!

My requirements where as follows:

• The NAS be OS neutral. I lean to UNIX / LINUX
• Must support the the following protocols SMB/CIFS, NFS, FTP, HTTP
• Should be free or and Open Source.
• Should be able to install multiple disk controlers, IDE, SCSI, and  RAID configurations, etc. (fiber channel maybe)
  

The Tail to two NAS

• The first one, that I installed was NASLite+  installs like a snap.. worked great but I could not install a second IDE controler....but if you only need 2 or 3 drives this is a dream.. why buy MS Home Server just to share files, save your money....

• The second one, and the last one that I installed was FreeNAS it is based on OpenBSD, and it supports all the IDE controllers  that you can stuff in the box,  I use the Promise IDE  controller which has one chain or 2 drives. Configuration RTFM,  Read The * Manual  Im going to give you a 1, 2, 3 and get it up dialog now........

1. put a 4Gb stick memory in the USB port
   
2. Mount the ISO image of FreeNAS
3. you will need to put in you network address, mine was 192.168. 10.223, gateway 192.168.10.1 and a mask of 255.255.255.255 this assumes that all your machines are on the 192.168.10. x network I also set the name to freenas.
   
4. write the configuration to the USB memory stick.
5. log into the WebGUI console.. in your browser type: //freenas or 192.168.10.223
   
6. Click on DISKS / Managment here is ware you see your disks ad1, ad2, ad3 there size, description, file system and status, OK we are going to format ad1
7. Click on DISKS / Format and choose ad1 use the UFS file system enter the volume label use about 10% free space and then FORMAT
8. Click on DISKS / MOUNT POINT might be /dev/ad3p1 don't worry this is where the drive is mounted windows systems don't realy have mount points, so take it on faith.
9.  Click on the circle with the E in it. Partition type should be EFI GOT file system is UFS and give it a name like Media_1 as this is the first drive in the system. And then click SAVE.
10. Click on DISKS / MOUNT POINT you should now see your disk with a status of OK.. 
11. Do steps 6 - 10 again for each drive I strongly recommend that you shut down the NAS and then install the next drive.... It will help you keep your drives straight.
12. PUT A UPS ON THIS SYSTEM!!! NO IFS ANDS OR BUTS. POWER FIALURE CAN SCRAMBLE YOUR DATA..
13. Enjoy... Life should be good