I'm debating whether I should buy a cheaper firewire external drive or a more expensive NAS drive.

Besides the fact that with a NAS drive you don't need to have a computer running to access it, is there any other advantage (only as it relates to the HD1000) to have one over a firewire drive?

I don't care about having the computer on 24/7 b/c I already keep it on all the time now so that my SoundBridge can access my music so my only concern would be whether firewire is fast enough to serve the files to the HD1000 for DVD streaming.

Thanks

Firewire/USB drives rely on the Windows OS, NAS boxes generally run a local Linux OS... I know which one I'd trust ...

To use Firewire HDDs, you always need to connect it to a host system. The host system can be Linux, Windows, Mac OS. The transfer speed is mostly depended on the speed between your host sytem and your client device, such as PhotoBridge or SoundBridge. The stability of your system is decided by the stability of your host system.

Most NAS are built by using embedded Linux. Processor in an embedded system is much slower than a $300 PC from Dell. Some NAS gives you RAID function which you have to upgrade by yourself on your regular PC/MAC.

Depend on what your needs are. If you use the system to do a lot of things (surf the net, P2P, gaming), PC + FW HDD is a better choice (More softwares, easier to use). If you have a lot of musics, files, pictures, and the NAS already has the server function you need (iTunes), NAS with RAID would be my choice.

This is just my personal opinion.