Western Digital My Cloud Home

[Wowbagger]

We needed a new hard disc as the ancient one on our network is giving problems. I asked Dez. He looked at Mac User or some such and said "This is the most popular at the moment."

So we bought one.

It's so crap that it's going back on Monday. A yardstick of how bad it is is that WD host a users' forum, the purpose of which is to enable people tho share their knowledge of how dire the whole concept is.

You can't access it using Finder, which is what you do on Macs. Instead, you have to download an app or do stuff on the web. How it has found its way to the top of the Mac User's league table is proof of the power of marketing.

It's utter crap. Don't buy it.

[Sergeant Pluck]

I have one. At the time, it seemed to me as if all the alternatives had software that was just as crap, so I stuck with it.

I use the WD Discovery app, which is the only way to make the contents appear in Finder. That seems to work as well, or as badly, as any other software that goes along with a NAS.

So, in Finder, there are 3 connections or locations associated with the WD drive: 1) the file folders, photos etc., as revealed by WD Discovery and inaccessible by any other method 2) the part that contains my Time Machine backup and 3) a public folder, which is necessary for my Sonos library.

[Chris S]

I've had one. It was terrible.

Our current NAS is a Synology Diskstation. No complaints so far - and its RAID implementation saved the data once when one of the drives failed.

[hatler]

We have a WD MyCloud unit. Overkill for what is essentially a back up but its interaction with my Mac is a right royal pain in the arse. I set it up, all is sweetness and light, and two months later the links have disappeared from Finder. I can't even be bothered to work out which end is the problem.

With the PC it is faultless.

Accessing it remotely has also been completely pain free.

[Mr Larrington]

I have one.  Only problem is you can't change its name.  Then again, I've got it connected to a W*nd*ws network

[ian]

I don't understand what this is? Can't you just plug in any disk. Or is the cloud thing? That sounds like the sort of cloud that'll open up and rain on you and your parade.

[Mr Larrington]

It's a NAS, basically.  Does MacOS not have an equivalent of “Map network drive” or “Add a network location”?

[hatler]

I think WD bill it as your own personal cloud.

[Sergeant Pluck]

What I’d like is just to be able to have it as a network drive - just the disc space, to do with as I choose, accessible to the network, but without needing to access it via a WD app.

I’m sure it is possible but I’m also sure WD’s software will somehow make it awkward.

As things stand, WD Discovery makes me as if I have paid to prevent myself accessing part of the space that I have paid for...

Next time, I’ll do it properly but at the time I couldn’t justify the outlay.

[hatler]

We connect to it from our PC easily. No WD app required. It's just a mapped network drive.

[ian]

It's a NAS, basically.  Does MacOS not have an equivalent of “Map network drive” or “Add a network location”?

Yes.

Not sure I understand this one, I have an ancient Buffalo NAS under the stairs. It's as slow as treacle flowing uphill, but when I turn it on, they pop up on my desktop and in the Finder.

I wouldn't attempt to use any proprietary software, I'm sure they all support SMB or whatever it's called these days.

[hatler]

It's a NAS, basically.  Does MacOS not have an equivalent of “Map network drive” or “Add a network location”?

They do.

Finder > Go > Connect to server

[grams]

The product page implies it deliberately doesn't do anything as complex and technical as expose itself as a network share, for added convenience and user friendliness.

[Sergeant Pluck]

I can’t be sure but I seem to recall it not being possible for it to work with Time Machine backups without the WD software.

It seems you can use Disk Utility to nuke it from orbit and reformat the drive.

[Wowbagger]

I returned the offending item to our local Amazon representative with the relevant bach-ode and Dez told me today that his account has been credited with the relevant <£120.

I bought a 4TB "Elements" USB hard disc, which I partitioned in such a way that my PC backs up to one partition using Time Machine, and I can just replicate the old NAS (the bits of it that work) on the other partition.

[drossall]

We've got one, albeit with Windows PCs only. It's actually our second. The first failed, and I spent a while mucking around with an obscure thing you can do with taking the disc out of the case, and reformatting it and reinstalling the software from Linux. I forget the details. Anyway, it worked for a bit, then failed again.

I have to admit to buying it as the easy route - you can pick them up in various shops. The name is daft - the point about cloud computing is surely that there are so many servers all working together, that any question about where your particular service is running becomes at best hazy. So when I can say, "It's up on that shelf in the hall", then calling it cloud is stupid. And yes, I find that the software designed to make it easy to use also makes it hard to do anything else with it. So I'm not really sure why I bought another, when I could have bought a NAS.

The other thing I don't really get is that it can, I think, work as a media server. Since I don't really want a media server, I've not investigated it much. But the idea of running any live service from your backup device seems contradictory to the point of futility.

Edit: I'm rather glad of this thread. It's made me check and notice that our ancient WD SmartWare is out of support, and we should use something else with the drive. I'm deciding now between their WD Backup software now, and the custom version of Acronis, which  might be better; I know that has a reputation. Sorry, Windows-only I think?

[Mr Larrington]

This Unit endorses Macrium Reflect Free for backup purposes.  Has two significant advantages over Acronis, viz. the price and the fact that it actually works.  Unless Acronis have seriously upped their game since I forked over ninety of the BRITONS' pounds for a three device licence for a piece of software that needed reinstalling at least twice a week.

[Sergeant Pluck]

I see WD Discovery is going to be retired in June:

At this time, remote access to your My Cloud Home™ device will also no longer be available through the WD Discovery™ desktop app.

https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/34904

Load of shite anyway. I have already got rid of it and gone through the process to switch to local network access. That seemed straightforward enough and I probably should have done it ages ago. TimeMachine is fine with it.

I am a little concerned about having to enable UPnP on my router to permit this change - I had that disabled as I was under the impression that came with security risks.

[Kim]

I am a little concerned about having to enable UPnP on my router to permit this change - I had that disabled as I was under the impression that came with security risks.

Can you not configure the required port forwards / firewall rules manually?

Actually, why do you even need external access for TimeMachine?

[Sergeant Pluck]

I am a little concerned about having to enable UPnP on my router to permit this change - I had that disabled as I was under the impression that came with security risks.

Can you not configure the required port forwards / firewall rules manually?

Actually, why do you even need external access for TimeMachine?

I do not know how to manually configure the port forwarding / firewall rules. The WD link leads to many, many things, none of which clearly tell me how to do that.

TimeMachine - as in an earlier post, I had been under the impression that TM would not work without WD Discovery, so just noting that it is in fact fine.

[Sergeant Pluck]

I got fed up with the MyCloud and binned it. 

I bought a Synology DS220j which seems to be much more usable for me so far, and with 2 4TB drives set up as RAID 1 should offer a more robust backup option.