Help to store hi-rez on external hard drive.

You would probably need things like an operating system, keyboard, and monitor to accomplish that.

I recently picked up a used IBM ThinkPad laptop to use as a music server for the USB DAC in my main system. It can play any files from its own hard drive, CD/DVD-ROM drive, or USB ports (external hard drive or plug-in flash drive), plus it can stream Internet Radio from my wireless network. And the laptop is battery powered so it runs on pure power instead of dirty AC from the wall and is isolated from the rest of the audio system.

All that and it can download (and play) all types of music files directly from the Internet. I installed the free version of the MediaMonkey music server to facilitate the file managing and playback. MonkeyMedia will play the Chesky HD Tracks (and many other formats) without compression and it features Internet Radio as well. It plugs right into the USB input of my Wyred 4 Sound DAC-2.

The laptop is considerably smaller than my Oppo Blu-ray player and I can easily unplug it and take it elsewhere when I'm not using it for the stereo. Heck, I can even stream movies from Netflix on it. That said, it lacks a remote control. Good Luck.

Marqmike, I believe I saved all the Chesky files in the FLAC format via MediaMonkey (which was recommended to me by Chesky) and when I play them on the W4S DAC-2 it displays the incoming resolution (usually as 24-bit/96k).

As Larryken suggested, it's best not to run a lot of other applications on the laptop you will be using for the music playback. It would be best not to use antivirus if you're not planning to connect to the Internet. But I use the free version of Avast antivirus because it's fairly unobtrusive and I like to stream Internet radio and be able to download music files.

I switched from the "Norton Security Suite" to Avast because the Norton was always running scans in the background. When I switched I gained back about 120Mbs of useful RAM.