if you happen to try freeNAS for the laptop (or a Desktop) you might look at testing out the
iSCSI option and end up with a remote attached local (software raid)drive as far as windows xp is concerned that you can treat as if it were inside your laptop, real cool.
im going to give it a go building a new NAS after i upgrade some drives in a few weeks.
apparently if you grab the latest nightly freeNAS it even has iSCSI raid0 so grab that to try.
http://www.freenaskb.info/kb/?View=entry&EntryID=204),
