thanks. i was just going to add a 1 tb drive to the existing freenas 7 box to allow more movies to be available to my oh play box. the only other nas i have had anything to do with was a hardware nas and adding a drive was simple. i guess i will just add the 1tb drive to an existing windows machine and share it. that is not near as complicated as this is. maybe when my son is here he will do something with freenas ifor me. your post was a great help it stopped me from figuratively jumping off a cliff. also one of my friends has told me that they may be going to "surplus" an old 8 drive nas unit of the type i have used when i was working.