WD My Cloud Home- A Personal Cloud Storage Solution for Digital Content

WD (Western Digital) new MyCloud Home and My Cloud Home Duo solutions for the consumers allow them to take whole control of their digital content rather than pushing them to the third-party public cloud.

Centralized content

The Western Digital My Cloud Home solution be set to automatically and continuously copy all user content from their smartphone and computer devices. The user can also connect their Social Media platforms and favorite third-party cloud services to continuously backup. For example, whenever you upload some media files to Facebook from smartphone or computer, the WD Mycloud app will take a backup of that and store them in the My cloud storage.

According to the company, the mobile phone is the control center of the My Cloud Home and along with My Cloud mobile app, it empowered the users to share, access and enjoy all their content from anywhere in the world with internet access. The My cloud Home mobile app is also capable of managing My cloud Home solution remotely to add services, users, or even make sure the system is updated with the latest software.

The Western Digital My Cloud Home is based on Android OS platform and gives multiple apps options to enhance the this personal NAS capability. It has inbuilt media server Plex to stream the media content such as Television shows, movies, home videos and music saved on the My Cloud Home from the personal devices like smartphone, SmartTV, Computer Desktop and more using PLEX app.

Apart from the single bay My Cloud storage option, the WD also provides the dual-drive personal cloud option for heavy content creators. Furthermore, the dual the My Cloud Home Duo solution gives a dual-drive configuration set to Mirror Mode (RAID 1) to automatically duplicate content onto a second drive for extra peace of mind.

“Consumers seek a way to effortlessly store their growing large piles of photos, videos and other files with a solution which enough flexible and can be used  from all of today’s devices – from smartphones to computers and from drones to social sites,” said Mr. Khalid Wani, Director – Channel Sales, Western Digital (India).

In a small interaction with Mr. Khalid Wani, he clarified some of our questions related to the My cloud Home:

Does the WD My Cloud Home and Home DUO support the Incremental backup solution?

Yes, both the devices support the incremental backup for all the supported platforms except third-party cloud services such as Dropbox and Google drive. From these services, it only uses the Snapshot backup.

Why NAS boxes still need Ethernet LAN cable for connectivity?

The WD aggressively moving towards the mobile technology, and according to Mr. Anoop, they are planning to bring Wireless NAS solution in near future. However, right now My Cloud Home & Duo support only Ethernet connectivity option using RJ45.

My Cloud Home solutions are based on Android platform, is this possible to use external APK?

No, the My Cloud Home is not providing an open platform, where people can install third-party APK files. Also according to WD as per there survey a common user doesn’t need such kind of facilities in a personal NAS box.

What kind of media servers does MyCloud support?

The new version of My Cloud only supports the PLEX media server because it is best in its class both in terms of performance and compatibility with other devices.

What type of drives used in My Cloud and why WD not using the faster SSDs?

Both My Cloud Home and My cloud Home Duo are using the highly efficient NAS drives. And why we not using the faster SSDs because, for example, the 2TB SSD roughly comes at the price of INR 70,000 ($1099) and if we use such costly drive in the NAS box, it will increase its cost which is not affordable by the consumers.

 

Western Digital My Cloud Home and Home Duo Prices in India

Both WD’s My cloud solutions possess the two years limited warranty

My Cloud Home		My Cloud Home Duo
2TB	Rs 11999	4TB	Rs 25800
3TB	Rs 13230	6TB	Rs 28500
4TB	Rs 14724	8TB	Rs 31900
6TB	Rs 20050	12TB	Rs 42100
8TB	Rs 25150	16TB	Rs 52250