Lady Margaret Thatcher wrote
Odie Ferrous wrote

All they've done is stick 2 x 500GB drives in an enclosure that is
bound to have inadequate cooling - despite their claim to the contrary.

Grief, I've been using an external 2TB
firewire drive for a couple of months.

Only difference is mine will outlast the LaCie.

No doubt!! Homebuilt?

Say I wanted to build a file server for my home LAN.
A sort of "set it and forget it" type affair. What OS?
Linux? Windows? 2003 Storage Server?

XP or 2003 SS are both fine.

Not worth bothering with anything else if you dont run it anyway.