Sharing data across your home network is usually a chore for many. Setting up movies, music, and photos to be streamed from a central network location can be impossible without the right technical chops.
Even if you possess the technical skills, it can easily consume days of your life. Then, once everything is set up you will find yourself constantly tinkering with the network any time you want to get data or media to a new device. Thankfully, Western Digital has made this task extremely simple by offering an affordable Network Attached Storage solution that includes a media server called WD My Cloud. An Amazing Home NAS Network Attached Storage, or NAS, is essentially a file server that hooks directly to your network. Its hardware can be geared for specific tasks like backups, file sharing, or even serving digital media. In the past, home users would have to design and build their own NAS solution, or spend into the thousands for a vendor supplied NAS.
WD My Cloud provides the everyday user with a NAS solution that allows sharing files, serving media, and backing up your data. Furthermore, it allows storage of photos, movies, or any other file from your smartphone or tablet. This provides a location to free up space on all your mobile devices.
Moreover, you can receive this functionality from the My Cloud for less than $150. The WD My Cloud comes in various storage configurations. They offer 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, and 6TB models.
The WD My Cloud Home is a network-integrated portable hard drive that allows you to operate your own personal cloud. It’s got a 1.4 GHz quad-core RealTek processor, 1GB of RAM and comes with a two year warranty.
![My cloud home desktop app My cloud home desktop app](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125467098/720329599.png)
In addition, each of these models has a WD My Cloud Mirror version that doubles the storage so it can Mirror itself creating an instant backup in case of drive failure. I recently purchased a from Amazon and I have really enjoyed it. It’s simplified backing up all our movies, music, and photos. Furthermore, it’s easy to turn this device into a media server that can stream to any device on your network. Setting Up WD My Cloud Setting up My Cloud is extremely simple. You simply power the NAS from your wall outlet and connect the NAS to your home router with an Ethernet cable. Once My Cloud is powered and connected to the network, you simply download an install package on each device you want to use and follow the easy setup guide.
You can find the install package at. Simply select “My Cloud” or “My Cloud Mirror” depending on the device you purchased and install the software. If you need help with this there are on the WD Support Site. My Cloud is ready to go right out of the box. However, there are a few changes to the default settings I recommend making. DLNA Server WD My Cloud is the perfect solution for streaming media to all devices in your house. My Cloud comes with TwonkyMedia DLNA media server already installed.
This will allow streaming of music, movies, and TV shows to any or iTunes compatible device. To turn on the WD My Cloud DLNA server go to “Settings” then “Media in the configuration and turn on “Media Streaming.” This will allow you to store movies, TV shows, photos, and music on your WD My Cloud and view them on any device on your network. Once the DLNA server is turned on, you have to enable the shares to serve media. As shown below, navigate to “Shares” and make sure the “Public Folder” has “Media Serving” turned on.
Network File System To easily copy movies, music, TV shows, and photos to your My Cloud I enabled the network file system. To do this go to Settings - Network and then Network Services. There you will be able to turn on the NFS service. Then go back to “Shares” and turn on “NFS” to the Public share under “Share Access”. This will allow you to copy movies, music, and photos to the Public share to be accessed by other devices.
This is also done under the “Share Access” menu. Static IP Address First I recommend a static IP address. Notice the WD My Cloud setup software opens up your browser and takes you to an IP address on your network to configure the device. The default uses DHCP, which means the address can change. I recommend using a static IP so it never changes and you always know how to access the device.
Setting a static address is simple in the WD My Cloud configuration menu. As pictured above, go to Settings - Network and select “Static” under “Network Services”. You will then be asked to input an IP address. But what address to input?
Your home network usually has a set of 254 available addresses. The router typically has an address like 192.168.1.1, and hands out addresses to devices on your network between 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.254. The first three numbers can be different from network to network, although it’s typical for most to be using 192.168.x.x. While there are numerous ways to configure a home network, the ones I’ve seen are set up the way I just described. Those addresses are typically handed out in order, starting with 192.168.1.2, so giving your WD My Cloud an address like 192.168.1.250 usually won’t cause a conflict. However, this is not the recommended way to do this.
The proper way involves limiting the range of IP addresses your router assigns and keeping a pool of addresses for static IPs. To do this you need to log into your router and change the DHCP settings to limit the addresses available for assignment. Instructions for doing this are usually in the router’s owners manual. If you are supplied one by your ISP, check their support site for information on how to do this. Below is a screenshot of the DHCP configuration on a TP-Link Archer C8, which I consider one of the on the market today. Other Settings Aside from turning on the DLNA server and setting a static IP address I also recommend doing the following:.
Change the name of “admin” user and assign a password. This is done in the “Users” configuration screen.
Turn off “Drive Sleep” under the “General” Tab What I Do with WD My Cloud Home Media Server Once I had the WD My Cloud installed and configured, it showed up under my “Network” folder as a computer. I was then able to upload movies to the WD My Cloud and watch them on my Roku Media Player Channel., this took no additional setup, I simply started the Roku Media Player Channel, and chose the WD My Cloud media server. From there I could access all my uploaded movies.
You can do the same with music and photos. WD My Cloud even supports your iTunes Library. I can access all my media from any device in my house. This includes my iPhone, iPad, Windows PC. I can even watch these movies on my kids Kindle Fire HD with the VidOn Player HD App. Backup All Your Files Everyone should have a means of backing up their critical data on their home PC or tablet.
Typically, home users will buy an external hard drive and schedule periodic backups for each device. That can get very expensive at $50-$150 a drive. Since WD My Cloud is connected to your network, all computers on the network can backup to My Cloud. If you backup phones and tablets to a PC or laptop, then all your data will be protected from system crashes and user mishaps. Furthermore, WD My Cloud supports backing up both Windows PCs and Macs. WD My Cloud makes backing up your system easy with WD SmartWare. To back up your device, install the and follow the easy backup setup instructions.
This software usually costs $20, but having a WD My Cloud includes it with no additional cost. Alternatively with the NFS file system turned on, you can simply Map a drive and use your systems native backup methodology. I’m only mentioning a few of the things I’ve done. WD My Cloud adds limitless flexibility for a home media solution. Consequently, this opens up endless possibilities for creative media solutions.
WD’s latest My Cloud NAS boxes, the single-drive Home and dual-drive Home Duo aren’t just new products, but new products refocused on ease of use. To that end, the setup, management, and browsing experience has been rendered as close to that of familiar online storage services as possible; i.e., you log in via a web portal to set up, peruse your files, and configure the unit.
We like the approach, and it’s quite proper for WD to refer to the My Cloud Home not as NAS (network attached storage), but rather as a personal cloud. The only problem is that functionality and performance are all too close to what you can expect from a cloud-based solution, even though the box is right inside your home. Design and ports Mentioned in this article. On WDC link to Best Buy The WD My Cloud Home features the company’s new two-tone, half-sculpted design motif that we first saw in the My Passport series earlier this year. With the thin power LED separating the two halves on the front, it presents a striking countenance that’s not necessarily reminiscent of NAS.
That’s a good thing, especially considering the keep-it-simple audience it’s playing to. WD The new WD My Cloud Home is available in both single- and dual-drive configurations. We reviewd the latter. We tested the 8TB, two-drive My Cloud Home Duo, which sports a single gigabit ethernet port and two Type-A USB 3.0 ports on the back.
(There’s also a single-drive unit with only a single USB port.) Directly above those ports is a thin power button, and below is a reset button and the AC port. The drive/drives are user-upgradeable and replaceable and accessed from the top by prying off the top plate from its back edge. Functionality and features The My Cloud Home will sync data with such services as Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google drive, so if you’re backing up your photos and other stuff from your phone, you can keep another copy on the My Cloud Home and have them handy for offline use. There’s also some standard NAS functionality in the form of multiple users and file sharing. WD provides several apps, including IFTTT and, but not nearly as many apps or capabilities as it does with its other My Cloud products. Conspicuously missing in action are iTunes and, as well as the ability to back up to a directly attached USB drive.
At least as far as we could tell. The USB ports seem to be for import only, and did not recognize the 2TB drive we attached.
Note: You may of course back up the data on the My Cloud Home using conventional means; i.e., simply copying the data to another device using backup software or by dragging and dropping files and folders. Setup and the web portal Setup with the Duo Home is as easy as surfing to creating an account, and entering a 9-digit code you’ll find on a card in the box the NAS ships in. You may then access your files via the web portal. If you want complete local access—that is, a drive letter.
Or something similar that you can drag files to—then you download the WD Discovery app, install it, and sign in from there. More on that in the performance section below. WD Discovery is available for Windows, MacOS, Android, and iOS. When using WD Discovery in Windows, a shortcut to the mapped drive is created. Z: on our system. But it disappears if you quit the Discovery app.
That won’t make tech types happy, and neither will the fact that you can’t access the unit’s configuration pages directly from the box by browsing to a local URL, such as 192.168.1.125, as you can other NAS boxes. All configuration must be done via the portal. Lousy performance The My Cloud Home Duo’s 45MBps read performance with a collection of small files, its 110MBps performance with a single large 20GB file, and its large file write performance of 44MBps aren’t the fastest we’ve seen by a long shot, but they’re acceptable.
But what to say about the small file write performance of 70KBps to 150KBps? (Yes, that’s kilobytes per second) Abysmal?
Performance climbed at times to 35MBps, but overall it took a surreal 1 hour and 20 minutes to complete a 20GB file and folder transfer. That’s 4MBps. It was very slow deleting those files as well. Our guess is the files were being handled by the Discovery app, whose intermediary presence gummed up the works. IDG These are the numbers from a completed test. Zero is not good.
The WD My Cloud Home also took well more than an hour to write 20GB of files and folders. The norm is 4 to 5 minutes. Additionally, once or twice, cancelling copy procedures forced a restart of Windows Explorer, after which the My Cloud Home Duo was no longer available. A question mark resided alongside its drive letter until rebooting either the WD Discovery app or the entire system.
Whatever tricks WD is playing with the operating system, and there are several background processes running, they are not yet fully stable. On the upside (sort of), you can use the Home Duo’s public IP address (e.g., 192.168.1.123 in our case) to reach the Public folder via Windows Explorer. This, we guess, bypasses WD Discovery, and it ups performance to an acceptable level—around 60MBps writing the small files, and 110MBps writing the single large file. Unfortunately, that Public folder doesn’t show up when using WD Discovery or the My Cloud web portal. We’re fans of WD’s attempt to make NAS easier. Kudos and “good job” for that.
But is avoiding 15 minutes studying a user’s guide worth severely reduced functionality? Even with the dual-drive model’s mirroring, the lack of USB backup makes this box a potential data disaster waiting to happen. And the write performance? We don’t know what to say. Stick with the regular or try the if you want ease of use without neutering.