[Joeaksa]

Just did much the same thing this weekend. Took an old desktop that was not being used and built it up into a server for my home network.

It sits in the corner of the office and is networked with my system. It auto backups everything I program on it at night. Cost was nothing as I have had it for years, and I stuck a couple of old 160 gig hard drives in it from another project.

Could care less about how much memory or speed as its used only for backup. Does not have a word processor on it, nor any other programs, its ONLY for backup. That might be a solution for you is to take an old unit and backup all the photos, letters, Quicken and so on onto a separate system. That way if one hard drive goes down, you have a backup.

I also burn everything onto a DVD every month or so and store it in another location. That way if the house burns or whatever its not a total loss of data.