27.9.2017

If you are after an individual or family data store and you are unfamiliar or uninterested in technical detail, the WD 4TB My Cloud Home Personal Cloud could well suit you. It is has an extremely simple set up, you just follow the pictures on the single small piece of card by plugging the drive into your household router.Our BTHub5 had four yellow Ethernet sockets on the back, one was used by our network, and another for this drive. By time I had got back to my office after plugging everything in, on the mycloud.com/hello site I could actually see the drive. I typed in the password shown on the card at the prompt that came up, then set up an account for myself.It was as simple as dragging files from the Windows 10 file explorer into 'my' area and the files were then visible on my Windows phone, an old NOKIA. On the phone I managed to see and use the files I had stored on the drive, which were some music MP3 files. I also easily saved some files from the phone onto the drive.Using the mycloud.com/hello site again, my wife used her Android MotoG phone and she connected to the drive. Using an old Apple iPad my wife managed to connect to 'her' account on the drive and see and use some files she had put on.The WD 4TB drive is a strange shape that looks like a box that comes apart, it didn't. There is a grate on its top and bottom to vent hot air. I tested the temperature after a day left running and it measured 24C at its bottom and 32C at its top. The box was cool to the touch, and quite safe for little hands to accidentally touch. Once set up it is one of those things just left to run in the background and forgotten. The thin strips of rubber that act as feet raise the case 2.35 mm and it really needs to be stood on a hard, flat and level surface where it won't be knocked.The My Cloud website can be used to change many different settings of the drive. It allows you to see how much of the space on the device is free, you can also reboot the device, shut it down, and erase all the data! For personal things, there is an option to view the files on it and view photos.There is a services section that allows you to enable IFTTT, PLEX , Social and Cloud Import, and Network Import. IFTTT is a free platform that allows you to save new Gmail attachments, save new tagged Facebook photos, save new Instagram photos and videos. IFTTT has so much more, including all sorts of things triggered by a load of actions by other 3rd party sites, saving camera Widget photos to the My Cloud home etc. Interestingly there is an option in IFTTT for whenever you are tagged in Facebook photos for them to be saved to your My Cloud Home drive. Some devices make a snapshot of a person detected to be saved to the My Cloud Home drive. PLEX allows you to drop your photos, videos and music into a PLEX Media server. The My Cloud Social and Cloud Import section allows you to connect with other cloud storage accounts such as Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Facebook and Google Photos. Network Import allows you to copy data from an existing My Cloud device to a new one. It looks for network shares using Slurp, I had not encountered this before, and did not test it as I only had one My Cloud device.All in all this is targeted at someone, or a family, especially those using social media who have not got a great deal of time for technical details. It provides 4 TB of storage easily and VERY simply setup. This could be regarded as a backup device, and if you don't have anything else this would be a suitable solution. But, although this is Network Aware, I wouldn't actually call it a NAS, it is both more than that, and at the same time less than that. It is great if you are dipping your feet into Network storage for the first time and you want to be simply guided through the various things available, but for anyone with experience of bigger or more sophisticated NAS systems I would say look elsewhere.

20.8.2018

Wanted a replacement for our very reliable, but very old WD MyBookLive 2TB. The old girl was getting a bit long in the tooth and becoming a bit slow and full. We used KODI on various devices including in the bad old days, WDTV LIVEs then moved onto FireSticks and Android TV to view our movie collection on the NAS.I did a bit of research on here and TechRadar and the like and came to the conclusion that I didn’t really want any of the more complicated NAS features that the bigger, badder and more expensive units on here offer. All we need is a reliable and stable platform that will beam movies around the house to the various sticks and boxes,

23.9.2017

I upgraded to WD 4TB My Cloud as I have always been a WD hard drive user and it was n obvious choice. Previously I have only used pocket size 500GB WD storage drives. This product however would be able to store all the data from our family gadgets and hopefully we wouldn't have to worry about locating/finding our small hard drives ever again.Looks/ QualityAs shown in the images, it is a beautiful product. It sits beautifully on your bookshelf and does not look odd in the middle of other objects and books etc. I was worried though that the size might be too big. The glossy finish gives it quite a unique and modern tech look.

4.2.2020

We bought this as it looked like it was rhe best value network drive for our media library - although I was a bit concerned by negative reviewsWe have a big collection of films and music and wanted to be able to access it mainly from our Zidoo media player (Android) and Apple TV but also be able to upload/download from a laptop or PC.It has a “public” folder that does this fine - although the Zidoo box could not find the drive unless we put the name in manually.- a bit odd as it is usually great at discovering drives and folders but it’s now connected ok.We use VLC player on the Apple TV and it found the drive with no issues.What WD regard as the “main” functions of the drive rely on you using

21.10.2018

It took me a long time for me decide to buy this because I wasn't sure whether it would work for Time Machine backups from my MacBook Pro. So this review is for you if that's what you want to do.I had this out of the box and up and running in about an hour. Most of that time I was trying to set up the first backup using a direct connection via USB because that was the advice I found on YouTube. There is no USB to USB supplied and I seemed to have every type of cable except USB to USB. I tried others like Thunderbolt on the Mac to USB on the device and Thunderbolt to Ethernet. But none of these combinations worked. I wasn't able to connect to the device.In the end I connected it up to its final location next to my router.

24.1.2020

Just wanted something to store 24bit Flac files to stream over dnla mainly and movies secondly for casting , that didn't need me to power up my PC. This fit the bill and as it is the same price as a the Drive inside(if you were silly enough to by the WD Red drive from a brick and mortar) I felt if it was as bad as so many reviewers claim I could just pull the drive out and use it on my PC. Thankfully it does what I needed but did have to pay a few pounds for enhanced Plex to enable dnla for music playback though I don't actually use Plex as a music player, there is no other way to enable dnla which I need for Comms with my various devices around the house.

22.5.2020

We bought this after I pressed a button on my MacBook and EVERYTHING disappeared! It was a very scary 5 minutes before it all returned as it was!!This amazing bit of tech has proved brilliant for us! Super simple to set it up. I didn't do this, but it took my other half about 20 minutes.All phones and tablets now have a back up stored safe!My other half especially likes it as all his music has now been backed up and he can listen to it from the cloud on his phone in the van without it clogging up storage on his phone.I like it because it has all of my documents and photos stored safely away. It's like having your very own personal cloud.The only thing I would say is slightly a pain,

29.10.2019

Hi Everyone!So I used to be a seagate fan but I knew I needed to upgrade my storage and shopped around. My decision was to purchase this.Firstly this isn't the cheapest Cloud Storage Device but its also not the most expensive, so why did I purchase this one?Firstly it doesn't look that bad its quite a neat design and although no one really sees it I wouldn't mind having it on display.Next, the reviews on other sites for WD products are great! Customer support seems to be something they are good at.3rd easy setup...So in reality what is this really like...? Im an apple product fan, we have 2 mac's, iPhones and iPad in the house and all are backed up seamlessly to the device wirelessly.

21.6.2019

After reading some of the reviews I can say I am more than happy with my purchase, firstly I used One Drive cloud backup which is forever asking me to pay for their service, I decided on a home cloud server and made this purchase. I am now worry free about how much space my pictures are taking up, I have set the WD app on my phone to backup whenever I connect to wifi connection although you can back up every time you take a picture. Each time I come home from work my phone backs up, all family members phones can also back up to their own files, but these are not private to each home user. You can access the images from any device your own including desktop pcs and laptops etc.

18.2.2018

Update: Hard Drive failed a smart check. Rendering a single drive version broken, dead, an exNAS. So basically the western digital HDD lasted a year, of very light use. I was always in my miniature seemed to be always spinning. I could be wrong, the drive never powers down. OLD REVIEW: Great entry level NAS (to date). Purchased the single 4TB version back in September. As for the hardware, I have no complains at all. Looks good, very quite, twice as fast as previous solution, set-up easy, value for money. It seems to be the software a lot of users are have trouble with. Hence I would not recommend this product for Advanced or Power users. Personally I use this device as a network drive.

25.6.2019

Poor instructions. I bought this for the purpose of Time Machine backups for my iMac and Mac book Pro. It took me about 4-5 days to get it to do the back up. The main problem is that a Time Machine back up is quite a sizeable amount of data especially the first time it does the back up. I eventually managed to get it to do the back up by connecting my computers to the WD 4TB Cloud Home with an ethernet cable rather than just using a wireless connection. Once it had done this for the first time I could disconnect the ethernet cable and let it do updates wirelessly. After this initial difficulty it has worked regularly and does my Time Machine backups very well.It is a pity that connecting the computer by ethernet could have not been written anywhere.

4.1.2019

Despite the critical reviews of this product I decided to take a chance on it as I have had the previous version of My Cloud whirring away continuously on my desk for the last 4 years and giving a superb cloud performance all round. Sadly this older drive is now almost full, hence the new one. Set-up was gloriously simple and the cloud was up and running in no time at all. I have not used any of the apps so far, relying on the respective internet browsers on my desktop, laptop, tablet and cell phone for transfer of data to and receipt from the cloud. The cloud has worked well on all these platforms. The 'sync from desktop' feature is very eager and keeps chosen files and folders backed up effortlessly.

29.2.2020

Be advised of the 'web access' app, which is limiting on upload speeds. Do understand some of the frustrations in the reviews here. However, once you eventually get your data uploaded to it, its pretty stable, if a little slow. Point of note, WD Discovery app does not work on W10 32bit, so you cannot get windows explorer access to 'Z' drive. Sharing feature seems a good idea, obviously advise following WD's recommendations re- emial invitations to drive, but I have discovered I can share single files or folders via sharing link to family members, which is ideal for sharing photos etc to someone not in the same house. As long as you don't expect a superfast network access drive with 20+Mbps up\download speeds,

9.3.2019

So where to start. First off I was going to buy a server to run multiple plex streams however I also needed a NAS to store all my media. I noticed on the plex compatibility that the WD My Cloud Home supported plex at up to 4k* but was more than adequate for 1080p direct play so I took the plung (As I say I needed a NAS anyways so even if it was poor for plex I still get my storage).So far so good. The price of this thing is on par with a 4Tb WD Red anyhow so you're essentially getting the enclosure and software for free (which is often hundreds alone from other suppliers) so first and foremost it gets 5* for me as a storage device and NAS and I can trust the reliability of the WD Red inside.

21.4.2020

I do not like to write reviews, here is a best product with a lot of bad reviews.I spent 1 years to find the best Cloud for my family.I was tried 3 another high level Nas, and all of them send back to Amazon.1. Now 5 phones on my family all photos and videos are automatically synced to Cloud2. Canceled iCloud from Apple, No more payment every month.3. I connect Cloud to my Plex and I watch all the 4K downloaded movies on TV4. My data now on all my devices, I can easy share by linkThere is a small minus, large files transfer take a long time if you use Wifi. I have 500Mb internet from Virgin, transfer time 1Gb take around 1mints.5.

Western Digital My Cloud Home Duo - Reviews

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