WD My Cloud drive

Mr_Moose · 7 Jan 2017 at 16:52

Hi all,

I'm looking at the WD My Cloud drives as a way to stream music to my wireless sound system (Yamaha YPS2700 & a WX030) while the PC is off, chances are I'll probably stream a film every so often to my TV as well.

The main draw is cost, £119 for a 3Tb option and while I'd love a QNAP NAS powerful enough to run as a plex server I simply can't afford the device and drives on top.

It's not going to be a main backup drive as I have mirrored 3Tb storage in the PC so any files stored on it will already be backed up.

What's the general consensus on these devices? Any better alternatives I should know about?

TLDR - WD My Cloud for streaming music, yes or no?

ed79 · 8 Jan 2017 at 04:19

I got the 3TB one last year. I'm NOT a power user but I'm very happy with it.

The DLNA seems to work fine to my Samsung TV. I think the only files that it doesn't understand are downloaded flash .flv ones. You can also right click within Windows 10 and use the "cast to device..." option.

Only advice that comes to mind is that I don't bother with much of the WD software, I give the drive a fixed IP then either map a drive letter or just a desktop shortcut. The only software I installed was WD Quickview which gives an icon in the notification area. It lets you shutdown the drive although once done the only way to power it up again is to remove and refit the power cable (there's no power button on the unit).

Edit - It uses Twonky media server if that means anything.

Mr_Moose · 8 Jan 2017 at 16:09

Thanks for the feedback.
Decided to go ahead and order one up as it seems to do what I need it to.
Thanks again

CircleFaust · 8 Mar 2017 at 15:22

how you getting on with this? i want a NAS mainly for backup and maybe a few other things when i get used to it
i've narrowed down to the WD my cloud mirror and the synology ds216j.
synology is a bit more expensive i think but can live with that if its the best option

KIA · 8 Mar 2017 at 16:00

CircleFaust said:
synology is a bit more expensive i think but can live with that if its the best option

It is. The My Cloud is junk in comparison.

BradShort · 8 Mar 2017 at 16:05

I've had the MyClouds and the Samsung derivatives but I had to stump up for NASs in the end as there was not enough resources and functionality. Fine for file backup and occasional streaming of audio but big film files with sub support etc requires more functionality. My advice is go Qnap or Synology, you will not regret it. I have both replciating over my network and they are flawless . . and very old models!

Adnams Drinker · 8 Mar 2017 at 22:19

KIA said:
It is. The My Cloud is junk in comparison.

This - I bought a MyCloud first time out, but it proved to be false economy, as the thing died after about 18 months.

Stumped up for a Synology DS216j and the difference is night and day, although ironically the Synology has WD drives in it!

Habakkuk · 10 Mar 2017 at 09:31

I've used them, but found transfer speeds to be slow.

Good value for storage per GB though.

CircleFaust · 10 Mar 2017 at 15:23

Adnams Drinker said:
This - I bought a MyCloud first time out, but it proved to be false economy, as the thing died after about 18 months.

Stumped up for a Synology DS216j and the difference is night and day, although ironically the Synology has WD drives in it!

order the synology with 2 WD drives

what is the best way to format these when i get it. i wanted to backup MAC and windows files to the drive. is it best to format NTFS and then create a folder for time machine or...?
going to be a learning curve for me this

nicknack35 · 10 Mar 2017 at 19:34

I fancy 1 of the Qnap And plug it into my TV and use it as a HTPC and get HDstation with plex and kodi and get rid of my PI3 and Minix Neo u1

Adnams Drinker · 11 Mar 2017 at 08:53

CircleFaust said:
order the synology with 2 WD drives

what is the best way to format these when i get it. i wanted to backup MAC and windows files to the drive. is it best to format NTFS and then create a folder for time machine or...?
going to be a learning curve for me this

I bought mine with the drives pre-installed so it was a case of just taking it out of the box, cabling it to the router, switching on and going through the browser-based Synology set-up procedure, which took about 15-20 minutes at the most. Not sure if it formats itself as NTFS or some kind of proprietary format - one of the experts here could probably answer that.

I'm in the same position as you, but I've only had my Synology for a week and use my PC more than my Mac at the moment, so getting the PC working with it how I want it to is the focus right now.

It's perfectly possible to do Time Machine backups to a Synology, but from what I've [briefly] read, it takes a bit of setting up. The MyCloud that I had previously had a pre-existing share in place specifically for Time Machine out of the box.

As someone who's owned both (admittedly the MyCloud was one of the entry-level models), that seems like one of the biggest differences at the moment - the Synology is far more capable, but depending on what it is you're trying to do, it may require more setting up/configuring in order to get there.

All good fun though - hell, this morning I've been into my router's control panel setting a static IP for the NAS, which is something I've never needed to get involved with before. Makes sense to me though that a device used for backing up various other devices on the network has a fixed IP.

CircleFaust · 14 Mar 2017 at 10:41

i'll be the other way round, my main use is the MAC
hopefully it will be easy enough to setup. their website is blazoned with things about how it works across all formats
is the static IP thing part of the setup instructions. i'll probably have to do that too

Adnams Drinker · 14 Mar 2017 at 13:57

CircleFaust said:
i'll be the other way round, my main use is the MAC
hopefully it will be easy enough to setup. their website is blazoned with things about how it works across all formats
is the static IP thing part of the setup instructions. i'll probably have to do that too

During the setup, the NAS grabbed an IP from the router like any other newly-added device, but it doesn't fix the IP for itself. I went into my router's CP and made the IP on the NAS a static one. I don't think it's strictly necessary, but to me it makes sense, if a device is going to be used as the central backing up point for other devices, if that device has a fixed 'identity' on the network. I'm thinking ahead mindful of the elementary mistake that happened with the NAS's at work:

We had two, with one backing up to the other at 9pm every night via the HyperBackup add-on. In that add-on, you specify the target for the backup via its IP on the network. We had to restart the entire network one particular day - router, firewall, the whole lot - not recalling that the NAS's had dynamically-assigned IPs and finding out a few days later that the nightly backup hadn't been taking place, due to the IP of the target NAS having changed. :rolleyes:

Since my last post I've been experimenting with CloudStation Drive on the Synology - via this, I now have the MyDocuments folder on my PC being continually two-way synced with the NAS. This was useful when I had to work at home on a job last night:

a) remoted into the NAS at work and downloaded the file I needed
b) copied it to MyDocuments, which immediately copies the file to the my home NAS
c) worked on the file and then remoted back into the work NAS and copied the file back to the work NAS
d) got into the office this morning and did further work on that particular file
e) remoted back into my home NAS and deleted the copy of the file stored on the home NAS, which in turn removed it from MyDocuments on my home PC due to two-way sync
f) bish-bosh, housekeeping done ...

Okay, probably not an ideal use-case for a NAS and very 'belt and braces', but when I'm at home I'm not normally handling particularly large files, so I liked the idea of a continually-synced backup of the main working folder on my PC. Have set my Mac laptop to sync its Documents folder with the NAS in the same way and will do likewise with my Mac Mini at some point this week.

CircleFaust · 14 Mar 2017 at 14:18

Adnams Drinker said:
.

useful thanks

want to get stuck into this but my order is still pending. have to wait up to 4 weeks for the WD reds to come in stock. i ordered the retail box as you are guaranteed the 3 year warranty then. the OEMs were coming from spain or something and apparently there were issues getting the full warranty with them