[Samba] Choosing hardware for a Samba based home media server

[Matt Roper]

I am considering obtaining a PC to host Samba as a home media server.

The server will hold:

 

*  music files (about 6000, mostly mp3)

*  images (about 4000, mostly jpg)

*  the odd video (about 15, mostly music videos)

 

It will be used to stream media to no more than 5 PCs (i.e. one in the
living room to handle 'My Picture' slideshows, and playing music files,
etc). Most of the client machines will have no hard drive and will boot from
a Compact Flash card.

 

My questions are:

 

 1. Is Samba the right choice of software for this type of application?

 

 2. What hardware would I need for this machine? (Obviously, plenty of disk
storage (scsi/raid?), but what about processor and memory?)

 

Thanks...