I have specifically signed up to this forum as a prospective owner of the WD My Cloud but wanted to ask some specific questions that I cannot seem to find the answers to online; the reviews appear to be generic and there obviously isn’t time to go through Everything possible in a 5 minute video!
If someone would be so kind to answer these questions I would be most grateful.
The main purpose for buying this device is because I recently got married and would like to be able to give certain family members access to ‘my cloud’ to upload there photo’s to (instead of giving them a physical Hard Drive or asking them to do this on DropBox etc). So…
i) Is it possible to give people access to ‘my cloud’ through the dashboard?
ii) If it is possible, does the person at the other end then have to download software just to do it? Ideally I’d like to give them a link or something similar to upload to rather than ask them to install specific software.
iii) Once the pictures have been uploaded to a folder specifically created for that person; I’m assuming I can remove their access so they cannot tamper with the folder going forward?
Security! How secure are these things?! Are they easily hijacked? I’m always weary of the main service providers (Dropbox etc) as the stories of hacks keep coming out… How secure is ‘my cloud’ and can you do anything to make it more secure?
Lastly but certainly as important as the last two subjects; backups. I have read & watched that it is possible to plug another USB drive into the 3.0 socket and perform regular ‘snapshots’ (brilliant). But… What exactly does this mean in terms of WD? I currently have 3 Hard Drives which I try to keep in synch as much as possible, although it can be fairly difficult without spending some real time investigating the best way to do it automatically (currently copy folders/files between the three). The ‘snapshot’ taken onto the hard drive of ‘my cloud’ - is that a snapshot that can only be used by this time of hard drive (i.e. I’d have to buy another ‘my cloud’ if failed) or does it allow the backup hard drive to function the same as the ‘my cloud’ (i.e. you could perform a backup and view all of the files/folders etc on that hard drive)?
Sorry for the lengthy post, hopefully someone can help
1.1. yes, you use the dashboard to setup the accounts, they do not use the dashboard
1.2. yes but from personal experiance the wdmcloud app is a better choice at least for large files/videos with Windows. if it is just stills you can probably get away without this but the mycloud app is faster
1.3 yes you can pull access or change to read only
seems reasonable and have not heard of any issues
I do not have a USB disk attached to the mycloud but there have been a number of issues reported here. I would suggest trying it but plan on maybe connecting the backup drive to your computer instead
I am satisfied with the drive and the latest firmware is better then the previouse ones. Knowing a little Linux is not required for this but it can be helpful at times
I would recommend it especially since you have a little Linux. generally if somthing happens people here can give commands to fix it so a little command line experiance is plenty.
I would not recommend this to someone who is not technical at all as there is a bit to this and probably any NAS, people like this should probably stay with a USB drive and/or commercial cloud
if you get it I would upgrade firmware and set a static IP 1st. then procede to users and shares.
I would try the USB drive attached to it. people don’t generally post when things work so I have no idea it it impacts everyone or a fraction of a percent of people
Thanks very much for your help It was between this, attempting to set one up with a Raspberry Pi or getting a proper NAS which would have been overkill for what I need and obviously much more expensive!
Thank you for your advice :-).
I’m assuming there is no fundamental need to have this attached to your home network at All times? Where I am currently the internet is not left on over night; as far as I’m aware it won’t cause corruption in NAS devices; obviously just make then inaccessible.
If you are actually shutting down the mycloud do it through the menu, not pulling the plug
not haveing internet all the time should not be an issue, I have lost internet a few times and the mycloud is still available localy and remotely when it come back
stay away. The application for remote use are awful and I am ready to throw this paperweight in the trash. I have read a bit and some people attribute it to the new update (Android). Regardless, if you can’t access remotely what’s the point of a NAS device. I kept getting connection errors after the app tried to tunnel into my device. Sometimes they were error code 400, sometimes 900, sometimes 905 (which is the current one I am staring at). Basically the app **bleep** and rarely works.
I removed and reinstalled used the activation code and it seemed to solve matters. Then in about a half hour I am right back to where I started. I do not have the time nor the patience to be a bug tester for this **bleep** company.
Wrt to your question about the “snapshots” (Safepoint).
This technology creates a flat copy of all the content files on your NAS to the attached USB drive (or network share) you set the Safepoint to.
You can eject the USB disk from the admin UI (always eject), take the USB disk to a computer and access/copy all the files there. So you don’t need to buy another MyCloud if the first one fails and you are left with the Safepoint.
A couple of things:
Safepoints are not backups (deleted files are deleted). They are a mirror copy of your files. No version retention either.
in my experience Safepoint have been reliable to create. Several users have had issues, in particular after firmware udpates,
in my experience, Safepoints restore do not work. Of course, you can easily recreate your Admin UI settings, and copy the files back manually.
I got my feet wet with this NAS, but I gave up after a while I outgrew this particular NAS. I ended up wanting more administration, media management and remote access capabilities. I splurged for a Synology NAS. Will never look back.
Save yourself t massive headache, go with the more expensive device. The WD MyCloud sounds amazing on paper but it constantly discconects from your network. Get something that has the ability to stay online for more then 24 hours at a time without loosing the connection.
I eventually purchased a DS214Play, but any Synology (one or plus disks) will do from a user experience perspective, because the DSM OS they use is much more complete. I still use my WDMycloud to sync back and take offsite.
Dr4ke wrote:
Thanks for your replies; I’m not starting to question whether it is the right drive if it is having all of the issues stated!
My mycloud has never disconnected itself. In fact since I’ve bought it the device has worked flawlessly. The only issues have been when I’ve been using SSH to install unsporrted items. I had a linkstation NAS before this and it would crash and disconnect all the time as well as the HDD dieing just after the warrenty.
Not really had many issues with my device and it has performed quite well. When I first had it I used to back it up to an external USB drive and it generally worked OK.
If you are happy to pay the extra £100 ish extra I would go with the synology solution, it was a bit of overkill for me £200 to share some data.
