Dubai
Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, apart from desktops and laptops, are creating a lot of digital contents and a new storage platform is required to access the data from anywhere.
Personal cloud storage is growing very fast with Google Drive and SkyDrive offering a minimum amount of free storage space in the cloud for free. But if you need more storage space a premium is required.
Western Digital’s My Cloud lets users share files, stream media, backup and access contents anywhere over the internet with any PC or Mac computer or on tablets and smartphones through mobile apps with no monthly fees.
My Cloud is a hard drive with different storage capacities that connects to home network. Installing the device is very simple and fast. The front of the device houses a blue LED status light when it is powered up and blinks when a data activity takes place.
The device weighs 1.8 pounds and comes in white glossy plastic and the built quality is solid and sturdy.
The back of the device has a Gigabit Ethernet port and a USB 3.0 port. The USB port is only for connecting external drives and initiating direct downloads from cameras but it does not support printers.
My Cloud is compatible with Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Mac OS X Mountain Lion, Lion and Snow Leopard.
First connect the My Cloud to the Ethernet through the WiFi router. Setting up the network-attached storage device is through an internet portal and it directs users to download an app for additional set-up, backup options and configuring the device. My Cloud App is available for Android and Apple products.
Additionally, the mobile app integrates major public cloud services so that consumers can easily transfer files between their Dropbox, SkyDrive and Google Drive public cloud accounts.
Users need to create an account to access the cloud and can add different users. It is a powerful and compact network-attached storage server for home users. No help is required to set up and configure the device, it is so easy. Users are asked to create an email address to which an activation link is sent.
The storage server, by default, comes with three public share folders - Public, SmartWare and Time Machine backup. The device also comes pre-installed with three shared folders for Windows users - Shared Music, Shared Pictures, and Shared Video.
Public folder is for storing data while SmartWare is for Windows backups and the other for Mac machines back-up.
To activate SmartWare, you need to download the app and activate it.
Users can start uploading files to My Cloud once setup is completed. The good thing about the device is that the data stay on the hard disk and under your possession.
Through the cloud user interface users can manage their data. The device, which runs on dual-core processor, is built for downloading and uploading files and streaming video and it depends on the broadband speed. At home, it was writing and reading large files very easily. The performance varies when connected remotely.
The main drawback is as the data is sitting on the hard disk and not in the cloud, there is no second backup for the hard disk.
The dashboard app is very user friendly that can show the status of the drive, folders, users, change settings and upgrades its firmware. The 2TB storage capacity is priced at Dh629.
