Hello;
Regarding your question on the data type that would use less storage space, the answer is binary type. Actually, you can use another shipping example as start point of your application. The example I'm mentioning is a data logger, that saves binary data to a file on your hard drive. You can find that example at Search Examples->I/O Interfaces->Data Acquisition->Data Logger->High Speed Data Logger.
Regarding your question about the CPU time, the statement is valid. In case you use a synchronous AI task, the CPU execution will get stuck inside the AI Read.vi untill the buffer is ready to be read. One thing you can do about that is to change the acquisition task to be asynchronous. There is a good example in Labview showing how you can accomplish that.
You can find the example at Search Examples->I/O Interfaces->Data Acquisition->Analog Input->DAQ Occurrences.
You can combine both examples to accomplish the task you need.
Hope this helps.
Filipe A.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments