Have I bought the wrong product? Some basic questions re My Cloud

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
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OK, so I bought a WD My Cloud 4Tb drive a couple of days ago. All i wanted was an external drive that plugged into my Mac via USB.  This drive was one of few options in the store.  

I was aware there was a Cloud service associated with this product, but I (wrongly!) assumed I could just use it as a ‘normal’ external drive via the USB port.

I like the look of some of the facilities available, but am tempted to take it back. However, as my lack of undersatanding of the WD MY Cloud service is high, I thought I would ask a few questions here about things that are not at all obvious to me!

  1. the drive shows up in ‘Shared’ in Finder and not as a HDD. Why?

  2. There are 3 folders on the drive ‘Shared’, some app thing and ‘Time Machine backups’.  If I try to create a folder, I only seem to be able to do it in ‘Shared’ and nowhere else. Correct?

  3. It shows up in Finder as me being logged in as ‘Guest’ and if I try to connect as a ‘registered user’ a dialogue pops up asking for a password that I have no idea what it is!  Not my Mac login password or my MyCloud.com password.

  4. whenever I put any files into ‘Shared’ - not surprisingly, I guess - the files get uploaded to the cloud server.  How can I just save files locally?  I don’t want them to all go to the cloud.  Also, What if I put 4Tb of files into ‘Shared’ would they all go to the WD server?  Is there a cost for this service?

Any help would be appreciated, especially in relation to saving files just locally on the drive.

Thanks

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The WD My Cloud is a network attached storage (NAS) device not a USB external hard drive. You cannot connect it via USB to your computer. The USB port on the back of the device is for expanding the device storage and for creating Safeponit backups of the device to an external USB hard drive. The WD My Cloud is designed to be connected to one’s local network (via a router, gateway, switch or hub). In a pinch one can connect the WD My Cloud directly to their computer via their computer’s networking port.

You really should read the WD My Cloud User Manual as it answers most if not all your questions. It explains how to use the Dashboard UI to configure public and private shares/folders and how to configure/add users who have permission to access private shares/folders.

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Thanks for that. 

I think I was being rather stupid, as the crucial piece of information I was missing was that there is no uploading to WD Cloud servers, just purely ‘My Cloud’ space on the NAS!

Haha!

All sorted.