Old tower into ext. hard drive or file server?

So I have a laptop I got last summer and, after 6 months of neglecting my old tower, realized I could probably use it for some good.

I did a bit of research and decided to turn it into an mp3/picture/etc warehouse. Ideally, I could plug it into my laptop and use it like an external hard drive. A file server would also work, except I'm already on a home network and can't connect the old tower to the network (my dad is a wires sort of guy, and we only have one that reaches to my laptop as it is). I have this old 5 port network hub by Linksys (called Network Everywhere), and was wondering if I could use it to connect to my old tower, while still being connected to my home network. My laptop is at 29% remaining available space, so I really do need storage space.

I'm pretty computer literate, and can give you any other info you'd need.

I'm running Vista on this machine (HP Pavillion laptop) and XP on my tower (a spare-parts Frankenstein creation, but it's hard drive is fairly new and it has lots of memory left) and have some spare cash to throw at this.

Thanks guys~

 

Right, plug the hub into the network and then run cables to the laptop & file server.

 

Cat5 cable isn't expensive. Just get one long enough to read your tower.

Make sure you enable file sharing on the tower though.