NAS to centralise my movies and photos

I am thinking of getting a NAS and whole idea is to centralise my movies and photos to the NAS.
Based on what I can afford, I am looking at a 2 bay NAS as I am thinking to start off with an enclosure with 1 x HDD and expand later.
I do not intend to have a RAID setup, just a personal cloud to store my stuff and share.

My Questions
1. Can a 2-bay NAS work if there is only 1 x HDD or must I have 2 x HDD in order to work?
2. Must both HDD be the same storage size or can I mix e.g 1 bay has 2TB and the other bay has a 4GB?
3. Must I use a HDD made for NAS? I see there are specially made HDD for NAS but cost much more. Moreover, I heard that using normal HDD may not last due to the 24/7 usages? NAS HDD are more expensive. Is there an Alternative?
4. If I just want a personal cloud storage to share, am I over doing it by getting a proper NAS instead of those Personal cloud storage device from WD or Seagate?
5. What is your opinion on those WD My Cloud series?My friend says it doesn’t last should look into proper NAS brand like QNAP or Synology. But WD is more affordable?
6. As I thinking of getting a NAS with HDMI so I can connect to my TV, I am thinking of getting the Asustor AS6102T. That was the only one within my budget that has HDMI. WD doesnt have and QNAP HDMI model is out of my budget. Synology doesnt seem to have a cheap model with HDMI output. What do you think?

USD350 to start

If I need to name the third NAS brand from the TOP NAS list, it would probably be Asustor. The AS6102T is a very good option in the given price range. And it will cope very well with all the tasks you have listed.

And yes, 2-bay NAS can work with a single drive.

All drives will need to be the same size, otherwise, the biggest drive will be seen as big as smallest one in the RAID.  (If you want to mix drives- get DS218+)

You should use NAS drives for this purpose- the most popular are WD red, Seagate Ironwolf or HGST NAS HDD.

If you want a personal cloud which is not annoyingly slow, you need to choose a TOP NAS for this task.

The WD My Cloud drives will be very slow and I would personally not choose them.

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