best setup for a file server?
 

Since I finally got my motherboard fixed (I bought a new one) I can go on to set up my fileserver. Whats the best way? It would be basically sharing 6HDDs of music, movies, photos, etc, DVD drive, my music collection (via iTunes if possible) to a mac, XP and linux box. I was thinking of just running XP on it and installing something like VNC. Any ideas of 3rd party software to make it easier?

Linux is the perfect solution, but not for tyros.

There is a hack that turns XP Home into Professional, and the latter includes IIS. Google xp home hack and learn which two bits to change.

A NAS device would be perfect for you (Network Attached Storage). See FreeNAS or OpenFiler. They support multiple protocols, i.e. CIFS, FTP, NFS and AFP, plus iSCSI which, while complicated (really a business oriented SAN technology) would allow you to mount volumes on the NAS box as drives on other machines. Maybe a bit much for home enthusiasts but they're both quite popular in the enterprise...

Anyone in the enterprise who wants to remain gainfully employed past the next crash does not run FreeNAS and/or Openfiler. (my definition of enterprise, in this case, is a billion USD/year in revenue and up). I've run them both at home, and for that, they are fantastic. They are not ready for prime time if you sweat data corruption at all.

Windows Home Server (based on Windows Server 2003) which has been released in AU/NZ with the US and EU soon to follow. I've been a beta tester since b1 and it has been rock solid. When you run out of space you just put in a new drive and add it to the pool. For redundancy you have folder duplication which is great, because all files does not need online redundancy (like RAID5).

I think ScottC also runs WHS at home, so I am sure that he will give you his thoughts on it.

I got to run though Windows as some downloading software I have only works on XP. Ill take a look at that WHS

I got XP Pro running.
Maybe I'm missing something, but when I share a folder, isn't there a option to select what users can log in and see what folders? I want to make a few accounts, one for friends to see my music, and a personal one for me where I can backup my files.