Features:

  • 4TB Storage Capacity, Back up files from all your computers
  • Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0, Blazing-fast file transfers
  • Package Includes: Personal cloud storage, Ethernet cable, AC adapter and Quick Install Guide, DLNA 1.5 and UPnP Certified
  • Auto Network Discovery, Windows and Mac Compatible.Compatible with Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Mac OS X El Capitan,Yosemite, Mavericks, or Mountain Lion operating systems. Requires,DLNA/UPnP devices for streaming and a router with Internet connection.
  • Stream to your DLNA/UPnP-certified connected TVs, media players and gaming consoles
  • The My Cloud drive is compatible with Apple Time Machine for Mac users
For basic usage it's fine with a few complaints

For basic usage it's fine with a few complaints. PRO's: Very easy to setup and configure. Allows for multiple shares and user access to the shares is configurable for read/write/full access. It looks nice and is solidly put together/not flimsy. The drive itself is likely good, but I don't have any history on that yet. It's quiet, even when transferring. It also has several configurations for power saving which if you purchase it you should probably disable at least the drive sleep setting. CON's: The only problem I see, and it's possible I've missed a configuration somewhere, is that the drive seems to have slow throughput. It seems to only register at 10MB/s. I'd be happy with 100, but I do have a gigabit local network. Even copying files between one share on the machine to another is slow, taking several hours to move 60Gb of files. It's possible that it's routing things through the network in this case, but it shouldn't be. If I resolve the issue and determine it's my network or router then I'll update the review to reflect that. EDIT: I did resolve the 10MB issue, and it was on my side, not the manufacturer. Upgraded to 5 stars as a result. Honestly, at this point there's nothing wrong with the unit itself. I was hoping for a little faster speeds but that's not a problem with the hardware it's a problem with my expectations not being realistic. It IS nice to have storage that just works from anywhere on my network. In the time since my initial review it's become ubiquitous and not even something I think about anymore and that's a sign of a good product. :)

Great Product for Home Network Storage or backup (and media server)

What can I say? I love the ability to live stream all my movies to any device connected to my network, and also through secure transmissions remotely. Now I do not have to play time-consuming games when waiting in the doctors office or whatnot, I can simply stream media and access my home network. The configuration is not difficult, and it even had options to map the ports automatically to establish remote connection. They literally walk you through the entire process though, and have a nifty little app to monitor general temp settings, storage space used and the drive status. It goes to sleep and uses low power, but is a great storage device to dump a network's worth of data on to. Especially due to the fact hat the USB drive in the rear is to connect additional expansion memory. For instance, I have several external HDD's that I used to connect to my router, configure and mount through DD-WRT, and run samba protocols (and others) to access on different systems. So you have 4TB of space on here (connected to your network, and available through any computer on your network through file explorers), but if you add another external HDD ( does not have to be the same brand), you gain THAT access as well. A great little home cloud/storage device, and with Cat6 wiring, there should be no issues streaming and accessing. For advanced users, I am pretty sure you can install other OS's in lieu of the stock software. Either way, I like it how it is for what I need. I also purchased a cheap, clear plastic laptop cooler for under $10 which I was able to connect to a USB port, and use double sided tape to push air through the device, keeping it nice and cold all the time. Even under heavy load.

An Excellent Solution For My Software Development Business

The My Cloud Personal Network Attached Storage unit is one of the best purchases I recently made for my software development business. In my office, I have 12 computers that previously shared data using Window Home Server 2011, which is no longer a supported product. To avoid the issues with keeping my data on an obsolete and unsupported product, I had to find another solution. I considered purchasing Microsoft Server 2016 Essentials, which is the last of the breed to allow full image backup and restores in the manner provided by WHS 2011. Unfortunately, Server 2016 Essentials requires the creation of a local domain which handles all the DNS services if you want the full capabilities of the product. I called Comcast network support to make sure that there were no issues with moving the DNS services from their Comcast Gateway Router to the Server 2016 essentials. Unfortunately, Comcast does not support changing the DNS services from their router to another device, and it would void my support. I continued my search for a solution until I located the My Cloud Network Attached Storage device. It was very reasonable in price compared to a full server, and yet to my surprise, it handled in an elegant way all my requirements for a small office configuration. There are two aspects of the setup of the My Cloud: (1) Access through a local Ethernet network and (2) Remote access through a Web browser. Local Access: The local access configuration was surprisingly easy… just follow the instructions. However, one point that was not emphasized enough is that after the device is installed, each computer must have the network discovery turned on to be able to see the My Cloud. Once it is turned on, it detects the My Cloud device and any Shares (areas that allow visibility to the users to store and retrieve files). I installed the “Sync” application, which will keep selected directories immediately synchronized with the My Cloud when a file is added, modified or deleted. But here is the awesome part: The network shares can be mapped to a drive letter so that the directories and files on the My Cloud can be managed with all the full capabilities of the Windows Explorer application. Remote Access: Setting up the remote access was more difficult because of the nature of my router. It would reject attempts to connect. I read all the posts on the Internet to fix the issue, but finally ended up calling the Western Digital My Cloud Technical Support number (at no cost). They determined there was a conflict with the Domain Name Server address that was defaulted when I installed the device. The technician went to the Network Settings, and entered a proper DNS server IP address. Once that happened, it worked. The support from Western Digital was superb. So to summarize, I now have powerful network visibility to access the My Cloud file shares not only locally, but remotely. The only thing the My Cloud can’t do is provide a method to restore an entire volume with all the software. Their system is primarily for data files. To get around that issue, I do a full image disk backup about every three months on each computer so that if a hard drive goes bad, I just restore the entire contents of the image backup using built-in Microsoft image backup and restore capabilities. Then I re-do any of the Second Tuesday Microsoft Updates and restore my data files from the My Cloud and I’m back in business!! It’s a 5-Star solution!! One of my best purchases to date.

Love it

Base on the reviews on Amazon I was pretty hesitant to get this drive, I even had it in my head that I was probably going to end up returning it. The file transfer speed was the thing I was very concerned about. My existing external hard drive was making some weird noises so I figured I needed to do something, so I ordered the 3TB WD My Cloud. I'm definitely not a networking "power user", but I know enough to get by. I opened the box, plugged it in to my router, went to the Western Digital website (as the directions tell you to do) and set up the drive and updated the firmware. Then I transferred the 950GB of movies on my old external drive to the new 3TB WD My Cloud drive in 4 hours. I was pretty thrilled with that. Based on countless reviews I was afraid it was going to take weeks to transfer all the files. I do have a gigabit router and am using cat 6 cables, but there is nothing special about my set up. I also tested the cloud aspect of the drive and it works just fine, I didn't have to do anything but download the iPhone app and I can see all of my files when away from home. One thing I might work through is the fact that the cloud system doesn't recognize the .mkv movie file format. For me it's actually not a big deal because I never intended to watch my movies through my phone when away from home. mp4 does work fine through the WD cloud though. I watch my movies through my home network using a Western Digital TV Live Streaming Media Player and that works great. Hope this help anyone on the fence about whether or not to get one of these drives.

A Nice Uncomplicated NAS

I bought this to go along with a WD 6TB My Cloud NAS. The WD 6TB system was mirrored so I could only use 3TB. I needed some additional space and decided to go without RAID on this unit so I could access the full 4TB. Setting up both of the units was not difficult. Plug in network cables. Plug in power. Follow some basic instructions. However, I'm only using these for Network Attached Storage on my local network so there really wasn't much to do. Digging into setting up "cloud" access to allow external access to media files and such wasn't anything I needed which probably made setup a bit easier for me. One thing that was a bit odd was the lack of a power switch but it does provide an option to schedule times to power these units off and then on again during the week. I have a UPS with the same power down scheduling option that I use to power down my computer, router, and a few peripherals, including the 6TB NAS. I've set both NAS units shedule to power down during the night and to power backup in the morning. So far, no glitches. I have file and data backups scheduled to run each night before shutdown with a complete image backup of Windows once a week. I'd broken something a couple of weeks ago and had to do a Windows restore and it went off without a single problem. These units are quiet as far as I can tell. I have these in my living room on a wire rack with my computer, peripherals, and flat screen TV. Even at night when there is no outside noise I can't hear them. I don't know about power consumption but I haven't seen any spikes in electric bills. On the flip side, even though everything I now power everything down each night I haven't seen any dip in my electric bills either. I used to use a mix of vendor storage, mostly based on price. But I'd had some bad luck with units that failed in well under 2 years and a couple that failed so quickly that I lost a significant about of data. As I've consolidated multiple NAS and USB HDD storage devices into fewer and fewer units I've pretty much stayed with WD. Of all of the mid-priced storage, I've seen the fewest failures and the longest life with WD storage. If I haven't jinxed myself with the above statement, I'm hoping that streak continues with these new units.

2 Thumbs Up! Great Job WD!

OK, I've had this little guy churning away for quite sometime now. Long enough to figure out if it was junk or a gem. Software had a couple of glitches initially but the first update fixed most of them. The last update made it a winner. So if you get one of these, update it first. I can honestly say for a NAS it's pretty easy to install and setup. If you can reset the clock on your microwave without looking at the operators manual, you can do this. If not, grab one of the neighborhood kids who's over ten years old and he/she will set it up in a flash. (Make sure you ask his Mom first!) LOL! Anyway, great device. So far it's been reliable and access from my android phone and Ipad was easy. So I call it a Gem! Tip: Do make sure you back this up! Never trust a single device to store your world in. Be it a computer or NAS. BACK IT UP! Trust me, you be thankful you did. As always AMAZON does a superb job getting it to me and ordering couldn't be simpler. KUDO'S to you!

So far so good

So I had a WD myBook Live before and it died seemingly randomly. I had it maybe 4 or 5 years, which I suppose is a long time for a computer, but for something simple like a basic NAS, I was surprised. It was had a lot of period issues with Time Machine. I'd have to create a whole new backup every 6 months or so. Really annoying since that takes hours- like start it before bed and check it's progress in the morning. I still don't trust this WD product, but set up was very easy. Like, really easy. WD figured that part out at least. The one thing they should have done better was give me a very clear option right in the beginning like "do you want your content accessible anywhere in the world or only at home?" so I know that I've got this thing locked down as securely as possible. This is just for time machine, I don't need a third place to put photos. I've had this about 2 weeks and so far it's been working as I expect it to: for me to completely forget I have it.

Does everything I need it to

I bought this after my old plug-in xhd had water dumped into it. It survived (after a week of drying), but I don't trust it not to fail and I wanted a wireless one that I could place safely out of reach. During the first three weeks I had an IP issue where I had to manually log into the drive every day, but then my old router died. I replaced it with a Belkin 600 and the login issue stopped, even though the MyCloud is still on DCHP instead of static. Media streams with no trouble and the auto-backup is a dream. The initial data transfer did take many (many) hours, although part of that may have been due to the old router (which I didn't yet know was dying). OTOH, moving hundreds of gigs of data by radio signal is slow work because wireless is that inefficient. Luckily, you only have to do it the once, barring catastrophes. (I suspect that's the rationale for not providing a USB port for cabled input, handy as it would be for the first huge transfer.) I saw a comment down thread where someone thought they'd lost the drive's IP address. Here's where it is: open your Network folder, right click on your MyCloud and select Properties. The IP address is listed right there, along with the serial number, MAC address, and unique identifier (uuid). Paste that IP address in a browser tab to access the web interface to customize your settings, add users, control which folders they can access, etc. To get to your files, you can use the desktop or mobile WD app or just open your files from the network folder. Either way, it's all extremely simple to use.

Easy to setup, and very convenient!

While I am tech-savvy, this is my very first experience with a NAS. I bought the 4 TB My Cloud NAS, mainly to use as an external hard drive that I don't have to unplug from one computer and plug into the other, because this one is always available on my home network. Still, the remote access feature is a very welcome addition, since I've always been hesitant of putting my personal files on someone else's servers. Now I have the benefits of the cloud, without the worries of what some third-party might do to my files or their storage service. First, I was very impressed by how compact it is. I was expecting it to be larger, but the WD My Cloud's design an size makes it perfect to be in my living room, which is where I have my router. Setup was a breeze. Like I mentioned, I am tech-savvy so I didn't use any of Western Digital's setup and management apps for my computers. I used the device's built-in web dashboard to set it up and it even guided me through the steps to set up the My Cloud .com account for remote access. My device is working perfectly fine with Windows, Android, iOS and even Ubuntu. Transferring all of my data (203 GB) took quite a while via Wi-Fi, but not more than what I was expecting. Now that all of my data is fully populated, subsequent transfers are much quicker, since they'll be much shorter. I'm not using any of WD's apps. I already had a backup software and it recognized the NAS without any issues. I'm also not interested in file syncing, so there's another WD app I won't be using. I only have two minor gripes about the setup experience: 1. The Public share is really public. All of your users will be able to read AND WRITE to it. I wish it supported permission granularity to keep it read-only for most users. I ended up creating a separate share that supported restricting users to read-only access as desired, and will only use the default Public share for document collaboration when necessary. 2. There's a screen in the setup dashboard to generate codes for mobile devices. I'm not completely sure what these are used for, as I was able to install the My Cloud app on my iPad and Android phone and tablet, and log in with my email and password, without requiring any funky code.

Full Reviews