MYCLOUD failed after 18 months - learn from my mistakes

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
1

I’m probably never going to buy a WD product again.

The NAS drive I had failed after less than 2 years.
WD Support advice was to pay to get the data back.
I was quoted min £300 to retrieve the data from one WD partner organisations to preserve the warranty of a product costing £100.

WD sales blurb does not make it clear that you’re only buying a HHD with Ethernet capability. It was no more useful than the HDD I had plugged into my router. It is NO KIND OF CLOUD device. It’s a HDD.

The Cloud implies sync/backup into actual Cloud servers. Even a RAID device would have been as useless once the Ethernet port fails, as in this case.

Eventually, by breaking the case, hooking the HDD to a LINUX PC I’ve recovered the data myself. A Harsh lesson. I’ll be using a proper cloud-based service from now on.

Be warned!

2

The lessons appear to be:

  1. research what you’re buying - the MyCloud ‘sales blurb’ does make it pretty clear it’s a personal cloud, and doesn’t offer warehoused cloud services; in fact, it makes a point of that, claiming it keeps you data in your hands, not in the hands of some remote corporation.

  2. learn to back up your hard drives (yes, it is an HDD with Ethernet; that’s called a NAS, or Network Attached Storage). All hard drives can fail at any time. So you either need to use a redundant array (RAID of some type), or you need to back up your data.

  3. No consumer NAS or HDD manufacturer offers data recovery as part of the warranty; it only covers device replacement. See 2).

The MyCloud has plenty of problems of its own, without blaming it for your not understanding what you bought, and for not taking a sensible approach to protecting your data from loss.

1 Like
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True enough. I can’t argue with any of those points you make.

I’m annoyed with myself for not understanding better the limitations of the product and it’s ■■■■ build quality.

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Obviously it wasn’t the drive that failed.

5

No. It was your attempt at humour.

Thanks for taking the time to write such an insightful comment.

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What WD sales blurb did you read that wasn’t clear on what the My Cloud device actually is?

You did NOT buy a HDD. You bought a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device that has a HDD inside of it.

Like others you appear to have made an incorrect assumption on the language “Cloud”. The My Cloud unit IS technically a “cloud” device in that one can access the My Cloud remotely to upload/download their files and media.

Like the previous poster indicated the My Cloud units have their share of problems but the device shouldn’t be blamed for the user not understanding what they are buying.

If you need RAID support then look at the My Cloud Mirror or the more expensive multi bay My Cloud devices. The low cost single bay My Cloud units CAN be backed up to provide data redundancy to a USB external hard drive. There are methods for backing up to offsite remote storage locations, but most are unofficial methods.

There are numerous discussions here that explain how to “unbrick” the My Cloud, replace the My Cloud hard drive, or remove the My Cloud hard drive and retrieve the data from the unit. Almost no consumer level hard drive or NAS manufacturer includes free recovery service. Only one I know of is Seagate with only one or two of their USB hard drives models (Seagate Backup Plus Hub for example supposedly offers 2 year recovery service).

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Not attempting to be humorous. Sarcastic, maybe. apologies for that.

Your first post stated “NAS drive failed”. I assumed you meant the HD which obviously was OK because you were able to recover your data.

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This is why I have a backup drive plugged into the USB port of my unit. I figured $90 was far cheaper than what it would cost me to retrieve all that data should the main unit die on me.