My story: I have a requirement for a reliable, semi-up-to-date PC, that would keep my data reasonably safe if a HDD went South [1]. I would also like to be able to play the occasional Win32 game on it. Also, being faster than a Celeron-400 would be a bonus. I decided to get an IBM Netfinity 5100 (IBM x230?) - currently it has Dual-P-3-733s/1.2GB RAM/36GB RAID-5 Ultra160 SCSI/1x 10KRPM 36GB SCSI, with DVD-RW. Being slightly wary of Linux, I went about installing and using Win2k on it. Whether this is actually supported on this hardware would be interesting to find out - I'm guessing not, due to the USB issues I had... anything USB, and BSOD. Joy. I had a spare machine (Celeron-400), with USB stick that needed files from BenQ old digital camera copied to it. The Netfinity wouldn't budge, and ended up being unable to get past the boot prompt. Chucked an old copy of Ubuntu (5.04? Live CD) I was given at one of the WLUG meetings I attended, into the Celeron machine, it fired up, I connected the USB stick, it auto-mounted it, and I could see and access my files. Thought that was pretty cool, so connected the camera - same thing happened... I was impressed. I got the job done. I gave the Ubuntu CD a quick whirl on the Netfinity - and haven't looked back :-) Currently have an Intel SRCS14L plus 2x 320GB SATA to go into the Netfinity as RAID-1. Currently trying to figure out best way to get data transferred from Netfinity==>Celeron; remove SCSI RAID gear (insufficient capacity), install Intel RAID controller, setup, then move data from Celeron==>Netfinity again. Questions: Any reference pointers to NFS for noobs would be appreciated - having issues with identifying where exactly it is/isn't working... :-) Am learning a reasonable amount, however. Failing NFS, any Samba info would be appreciated - D/L'ing Samba packages plus docs at the moment... Recommendations for partitioning scheme please? Current Idea: Out of ~300GB: =GRUB= ===500MB /boot=B== ====4GB Linux Swap==== =====4GB Windows Swap===== ???? PROFIT! ======60GB Windows NTFS===B=== =======60GB Linux Business===B==== ========60GB Linux Play/Testing===B===== =========60GB Data1 FAT32=========== ==========60GB Data2 FAT32=========== Any help appreciated :-) Elroy. [1] A regular backup plan is also on the agenda... :P