NAS or something else?

You can do either one. But I go along with strollin. Use a back up just for back up and a media server just for a media server. In my personal opinion never mix the two on the same disk.

On my laptop and where I'm working now I don't have a lot of choices. I tend to back up what's important to a thumb drive and also to one of my staff's laptop. Work stuff so it's ok for her to have it.
On my desk top I have a WD external 3TB that gets the system backups.

However the movies go on the cloud server.
 
thanks for the peace of mind, I was beginning I could not avoid this process but if I can make this as a media server then its all good. I was thinking of having a NAS that is customisable, i.e. have a 4 bay drive and I can just add more hard drives when it gets full. Like I mentioned before, I don't intend to use it as a back up utility and I don't see anything wrong with it. Is there any pitfalls in going that direction?
 
In a nutshell, no. But in the world of NAS/cloud devices you have to shop carefully. Some are good and some are real dogs. Stay with the major players.
And when you read the reviews say at NewEgg, take what they say with a grain of salt. Some users are bad mouthing bone heads. They have no clue how to set up and use a NAS.
The WD cloud devices have their own user end software that is a snap to use. One will even go out on your network and find the box for you. Then one that is the dashboard. That's the behind the curtain setup and maintenance programs. That's also where the extra software goodies are kept. Then the main program goes on your computer and is the access panel to the drive.
Or you can just map the whole kit and caboodle as a network drive. I've got mine both ways. Mapped I can see how many files are on the drive with the right click properties function.
 
Having extra bays available for expansion is not a bad idea. When my NAS is full, I plan to buy 2 new, larger drives for it. Hopefully, that won't be for awhile.

The WD NAS has a DLNA Media Server built-in which allows any device on my network to access the media stored on the NAS. I also have the NAS mapped as a drive on my network which makes it very easy to copy/move media to it.
 
Thanks for the replies guys, sorry for not responding sooner. I feel confident that the NAS is the way to go for this kind of thing. With NASes, do they have their own operating system running to coordinate this network thing? whether it is a prebuilt NAS like the WD links you guys showed to the custom made NAS. Also with custom NAS, will the hard drive play a factor in the performance as well as the network you have on your router?

Cheers
 
Yes, a NAS generally runs it's own OS, often a stripped down version of Linux.

Most definitely hdd performance and your network play a significant part in the overall performance of the NAS. You will want a router (and NAS) that supports gigabit ethernet for max transfer speeds. This will be very important when copying large files (such as videos) to your NAS over your network. Playback of videos doesn't require as fast a connection.
 
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