NAS? Could Windows2008 work as a NAS? Or is there better choices?

Hi,


My computer has today 3x2 TB WD Green disks and thay are really slowing my system down so now I need to move them to somekind of NAS.

I was first lookin at the "Synology Disk Station DS411j" but then I found that I got some old hardware laying around (AMD 3200+ CPU, 1 GB ram,XFX GeForce 7600GT, Seasonic SS-300FT in a Thermaltake Xaser II chassi). So now I got some questions :

1. I was looking into running FreeNas on my NAS but if the NAS is crashing then it will be alot of work to get the data back? Is it right that its not possible to just mount a drive from the FreeNas in to my Windows7 computer and read the data?

2. If I install Windows 2008(not r2 that demands 64bits CPU) and then uses dynamic volums to get one big volume, what will happen if this Windows2008 craches? will it be able to place one of the disks in my windows7 computer and reda the data?

3. What happens if one disk i a dynamicvolume craches? will all data be lost?

4. Is there any sleepmode in Windows2008? If would be nice if the computer shutsdown at night and startsup when it is about to be used.

5. Will a finished product like the "Synology Disk Station DS411j" demand less power? Will I earn anything to buy the DS411j instead of my old hardware if we look on the economics?

Windows Home Server 2011 has had some good reviews, and is cheap. I think it may be going away but if it works who cares?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -_-NA-_-NA

A standalone NAS will use very little power. I have deployed several or these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822155019

Not perfect and a bit hard to learn initially, but they are great for backups.

Synology is faster though, an important point for streaming movies and such.

I will always use a NAS device over a dedicated PC now. They are WAY smaller, can be tucked away with adequate ventilation, and are remotely managed.

Your limiting factor will always be the network speed. There is no reason to have anything like RAID 0 in an NAS.