My brother Dan suggested I look into network-attached storage for my file-server needs. Network-attached storage is a big hard drive that can be plugged in to a local area network and accessed from any local computer. (I keep trying to write that sentence in a way that would make sense to non-IT pros; did I succeed?) NAS boxes just barely start at around $250, and ones that are actually RAID's or are high-capacity are lots more than that, and I'd have to replace my router to get a fast enough network to make it worthwhile. Replacing my router is another coupla hundred dollars. Pondering all of this I remembered that I started this off by trading hardware I wasn't using for a new PC. "File server" is not one of the goals on my post-it notes on the window. I just don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on a file server right now. I would just like for my macs to stop running out of disk space every three days. Simple solution! I ordered a simple, external USB hard drive. I'll plug it into my mac mini, which will make a just fine file server for the windows box and the other mac. I'll be behind mac os x firewall goodness, I'll have superfast access from my main dev machine, and I won't have to rely on the windows file system. Sound okay?