silly newbie question about building a server

[Ravenseye]

Howdy all.

I figured I'd make my first post a doozie. at least to me its a doozie.

I'm hoping someone here will be able to answer this for me

I want to put together a fileserver with as much harddrive space as possible.

How do I figure out what components go into this sort of rig?

I have experience building and repairing pc's. But I've never built something like this before...and I am looking for as many ideas as possible before I plan it out.

Let me put out what I need it for, and maybe there is a better solution that I am not aware of...

I want to archive graphics from numerous sources, and have it serve as my scratchfile for photoshop/painter/etc. I am an illustrator/graphic designer and I want to have all of my paper reference converted to digital reference materials to conserve physical space that is being used unwisely.

I've got a scanner I can use to scan in the documents. I've got the software to take it into acrobat files for storage, I just need a decent space to hold 'em now...

Also, I'd love to use Linux as the OS on this machine as I know its about as stable as ya can get...Is this possible? and how would I go about setting that up on the machine?

So, is this a doozie, or is it a floozie?

-Mike

 

[amdskip]

I would pick up a dell server like the 400sc or whatever when they are on sale for $300 after MIR. P4 2.79ghz IIRC and add a couple large storage drives and you are set.