Ars Technica’s Brian Won published this new addition to their lauded system guides a few weeks ago (January 31) but I’ve been keeping the tab open in Opera to remind myself to read it again and link it here.

Ars System Guide: Home Media Server

“What’s a home media server? A central place to put all that data you have, from e-mail to music to movies. With multiple PCs becoming commonplace in the home, the need to push data through every room in the house via Ethernet or WiFi combined with the proliferation of digital-only content mean the storage demands of home users are rising quickly.

Fortunately, hard drives have been getting cheaper as well, to the point where they are treated as commodity items by OEMs and even smaller system builders. The major upside of this is that storing 250GB of data or more can be done for well under $100, and 500GB for $140. Compared to prices 10 or 15 years ago of $1 per megabyte, and the possibility of a home media server with a terabyte or three of storage is sure to bring a silly grin to many a face. A cheap home PC can store a few hundred gigabytes of data very cheaply, while a low-cost home media server can rack together a few hard drives to act as a central location for data storage, distributing everything over the home network.

A well-written guide to building your own home media server for not a lot of money. It’s on my list of things to do this year.