Non-RAID NAS question

[brianz]

Hi - I am new to network storage. My backup plan for photos, video, etc., has always been to simply "synch" with external USB drives. I plan on continuing this approach as my primary backup plan, rather than using a RAID system, as I am very serious about incremental photo backups and I just like the hands-on oversight.

My house has fully wired ethernet (not gigabit though) so I want to build or buy something. I am fairly PC-savvy, having built my recent Photoshop-oriented PC, but I am NAS-illiterate.

Goals:
Given the above, there are two things I want to accomplish with NAS.

1) The easy part - a simple "always on" network distribution of multimedia. Currently I use my main PC for this, but I want to use a dedicated NAS instead of leaving my big PC powered on constantly.

2) The harder part for me to grasp - I'd like to have a constant application running that I currently use on my main PC which downloads my home weather station data and uploads automatically to a website. It's an installed application (not a script or anything) that runs under Windows 7. I just don't know if an application can run on a NAS? Or should I just build a new second desktop and make it my NAS? Point is, again, I don't like leaving my other main Photoshop PC on 24/7. I am just having trouble understanding the OS side of a NAS.

I am eyeing these two components for a NAS, what do you all think?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108063
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136792

Thanks everybody.

Brian

 

[sminlal]

Unless the NAS itself runs Windows, you'll be out of luck for running your weather station app on it. And the product you linked to doesn't run Windows.

You can reduce power usage by scheduling the program to run using Task Manager and putting the computer to sleep when you don't use it. Task Manager has the ability to wake the computer up from sleep mode to run the program. This should work as long as the program doesn't require you do anything with the UI (User Interface) like click a button or select a menu item.