All my files have been produced on Windows OS's. I am purchasing a new computer on which I will run Linux. I haven't yet decided which flavor. Before Windows 10 is forced on me, I want to back up my Windows 7 64 bit lap top and desktop hard drives, as I plan to try to avoid the Windows 10 installations on both. But I would like to back-up my linux created files on the NAS as well. What are the key specifications to look for?

Windows uses SMB/CIFS for sharing out to other Windows systems.

Linux' native tool for sharing/mounting is NFS but you can use Samba on Linux to mount CIFS shares.

So the answer is make sure it at least does CIFS shares. If you don't want to muck with Samba make sure it also does NFS shares. Many NAS devices do both but may or may not do both on the same share. (i.e. Some may require you to create separate shares for CIFS and NFS rather than allowing a single share to be exported both ways.)

If you're really just doing this for backups you might want to look at a simple USB external drive instead of NAS.

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