Home nas advice please

chili · 18 Dec 2019 at 22:44

I am a complete novice to a nas setup and am looking to get something like the wd my cloud. what i want to do is store files and pictures from my pc or my mobile or laptop and to access them from anywhere outside of my home, i would also like to stream films etc to my tv from this. i already use a wd my passport drive to stream movies wireless. Money is an issue i don't want to waste loads on this. currently a wd my cloud 3tb is available for £125 which i think is quite reasonable however i have read some poor reviews and i am now seeking advice from anyone on here. i would like something that comes complete with a drive in place.

thanks

bremen1874 · 18 Dec 2019 at 23:03

Most of your requirement could be handled using one of the cloud services.

If you do decide to use a NAS what are your plans for redundancy and backups?

chili · 21 Dec 2019 at 14:04

Everything i have is already backed up to an external drive which is just a simple manual job, i like the idea of this unit for access to files, pictures, music, and to stream music anything i put on it will already be saved on a removable drive.
As i have already said i am a complete novice to this so just after something simple

Donnie Fisher · 21 Dec 2019 at 22:58

I have an original model mycloud ex2. Its OK, but not much more. i have used the mycloud side of things to see files on it remotely in the past ... but it was only ever through the mycloud app. Just remember that your speed of access will be limited by the upload speed of your broadband, which is on average is far less then your download speed.

My EX2 came (and despite being disabled, comes back after reset too) with apps and utilities installed which I found were intrusive / hog system resources and significantly slowed down the performance of the drive when you loaded a lot of media files onto it. I.e. imagine transferring your 200+Gb media folder to it, after about 50Gb it would slow down to a crippled crawl, and I would have to split up the initial large transfers to fill the drive. It shouldn't have had to be like that.

Newer ones may be better ( mine is about 6-7 years old now ) in these areas, but l dont know personally.

As Bremen says, have a real think about just what it is you need to access from outside the home. How much space does that actually need ? An online account like google drive or onedrive may suit your needs better for those files.