The home server here is now a netbook with external USB hard drives. Why we did that was simple. The old PC server solution was pulling 200+ Watts and accounted for a big chunk of the electrical use as it ran 24x7.

Now you might think a netbook would not be able to serve up files quickly but given the 100BT LAN (100 megabits per second) this appears to not tax the netbook.

On the Watt meter the netbook when the screen is off and not much going on slips to under 9 Watts. When transferring a file, 11 Watts and the screen on is 15 Watts.

And this with no big speed loss over the ethernet.

Have you tried this?
Bob