DIY. But I actually don't have a huge need for live storage.

So our 24/7 cookie-tin Mini-ITX server holds email, photos, web, etc. live for us on it's puny 320GB notebook drive (to be updated to 500GB some day soon-ish). It runs Debian Sarge.. with some strategic updates like last week's Linux kernel etc.. We'll replace Sarge with a modern distro this winter.

The MythTV box has it's own internal 2x750GB RAID0, and we don't bother backing up the recordings. This box powers off when not in use.

A trio of external USB2/eSATA enclosures host an assortment of 300GB drives that are used to backup the server and our notebooks weekly.

That's it.

I do ponder consolidating it all into a single server, but then the data would be in one basket.. not as safe as it is now, and it would do more damage to the planet from having to be on all of the time.

But if I did go for a larger NAS, it would simply be the Mini-ITX box, with more 500GB notebook drives plugged into SATA and/or USB2 on it. With Debian Lenny under the hood. I prefer Debian over Ubuntu for this task, simply because it has a MUCH longer shelf life.

Despite the frugal bits described above, there actually is a huge amount of storage and horsepower available to us, most of it stacked under the work table in my home office. Terabytes of storage, lots of CPUs, etc.. But none of it in any kind of semi-permanent use, and it's all powered off when I'm not building or testing kernels on it.

Cheers