File Server Setup

[kenkam]

Hi everyone here... I am new by the way.

Context: I have 2 computers at home and recently purchased a Wireless router for the internet. It is responsible for downloading off BT, burning the data onto DVDs and using the data (.avi, .mp3) simultaneously. This puts a big load on my computer.

I was thinking, since I have a wireless router installed, to have a cheap file server to serve all the data.

The file server would be running linux.

Question 1: Is Samba the only way for linux to share its data with windows boxes?

Question 2: The computer will be a P3 600mhz box with 128mb ram. It only needs to do hard-disk writes/reads. If I give it a ATA133 card and 2 hdds, would it be able to take the load of file serving? (Say I have 2 clients connected to the server - one would be burning DVDs at 8X speed, and the other would be writing to it at 600kbps)

Thanks (in advance) very much for your help people!

 

[kenkam]

Thanks! I was just worried about the fact that it was a P3 600 (or was it 500) but since that seems to work yeah I'll go ahead with it. And I'll probably forget about the ATA133 since wireless shouldn't be quicker than ATA-100.