Hey Michael,   XBMC has it’s

Hey Michael,

XBMC has it’s own distro you can install from their Live package.  I believe it’s just a minimal unbuntu install that comes w/ all the drivers you need.  There is a guy on the XBMC forms that actually made his own distro for the sole purpose of eliminating anything unnecessary to achieve faster boot up times.  I may experament with that (called Elec.tv or something like that).

I have a netgear gigabit switch.  Don’t have the model in front of me, but it is a 5 port, somewhat older (not too old since it is gigabit).  It registers the network connection as a gigabit, not just 100BaseT.  

My desktop uses a .. I want to say realtek Network controller, perhaps a Nvidia one.  In my WHS, I have 3x 2TB WD Green drives and 1x 1TB factory drive for the system drive (it’s the HP MediaSmart EX490).  Those drives while not exactly peak performers, should be able transfer files at a rate greater than 30ish MB/s.  I’ve been debating doing a server restore and essentially reinstalling the WHS OS on the drive (or replacing the system drive w/ another 2TB drive, and doing a server recovery).  Regardless, this is an issue I can worry about at a later time,  but when I do start troubleshooting, I’ll be sure to come here 🙂