How Long Does Mycloud Take to Upload

Western Digital'southward My Deject Home is a network-fastened personal cloud storage solution, designed to combine the convenience of deject storage with the privacy and security of local storage.

Information technology's available in capacities ranging from 2TB to 16TB, to meet the needs of both families and small businesses, and with apps for the Mac, PC, iOS devices, and a deject website, content can exist accessed from anywhere.

On the surface, the My Deject Home sounds great, but there are some definite issues with the device, mostly concerning the apps that are used to access and upload your content.

Design and Features

Western Digital's My Deject Home has a elementary white and silvery pattern with a diamond-shaped pattern at the lesser of the device and a small-scale Western Digital logo at the front. At the dorsum, there's a USB three.0 port for attaching peripheral devices or attaching the My Cloud Home to a figurer over USB, a spot for the power source to plug in, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. A white LED on the front end lets yous know when the My Cloud Dwelling house is powered on, and it volition as well blink if there is an issue.

The body of the My Cloud Dwelling measures in at vii inches alpine, 5.5 inches broad, and 2 inches thick, similar in size to other network-attached storage solutions. The My Cloud Habitation Duo, which has double the difficult drives for mirrored fill-in functionality, is twice every bit thick, just I tested the single hard drive version.

The My Deject Domicile is meant to exist plugged in next to a router and tucked away on a shelf, and its unassuming blueprint works well for that purpose. Mine's hidden behind a Goggle box on my entertainment unit because that's where my router is, so it'southward not visible, but I wouldn't listen if it were.

Western Digital's My Cloud Habitation can store all of your files from iOS and Mac devices in 1 location, and it tin be used for device backups from a range of devices. During my testing, my unit of measurement was reliable and had no bug staying connected to my Wi-Fi network, then my files were always accessible to me.

My Cloud Home Apps and Setup

My Cloud Home setup consists of plugging the device in to a power source and connecting it to a router using an Ethernet cablevision. From there, it tin can be accessed over the web using the My Cloud website or through the accompanying Mac and iOS apps. In that location are also apps for PC and Android devices.

The performance of the My Cloud Home is going to depend on your own home connection speeds. If you accept a slow home network, it'south going to take a long time to transfer files over WiFi. Even with fast speeds, it can be pretty tedious waiting for an iCloud photograph fill-in, a Time Machine fill-in to consummate, or a big file transfer to complete. I accept a reasonably fast connexion (100Mb/southward downward, 6Mb/s up) and file transfers both ways took more than fourth dimension than I would have expected.

iOS App

With the My Cloud iOS app, you tin can connect to the My Cloud Home from an iOS device. You tin can apply the app to browse all of the files you've uploaded, and to upload photos from your iPhone or iPad to My Cloud Dwelling house. Multiple iOS devices tin sync to the My Cloud Home if desired, so several family members tin utilize information technology, and at that place's an option to add new users.

There's an option for automatic backup, which volition upload all of the photos from your Camera Roll to the My Cloud device. I turned information technology on, and it took just over an hour to upload about 3,000 photos. You tin likewise accept photos and add them directly to My Cloud Dwelling house or upload photos from your device manually.

The app as well features a section for enabling a cloud content fill-in, which downloads everything from Dropbox to your device. I enabled this, and it essentially copied everything from Dropbox to a folder on the My Deject Home. Dropbox transfer worked flawlessly and everything copied over in a couple hours.

Aside from those options, there's nothing else you can practice with the iOS app -- it's simply for photos and browsing files uploaded from the desktop. There is no integration with the new Files app in iOS eleven, there's no support for Drag and Drop on iPad, nor is there a proper iPad app, and in that location'due south no way to upload a file that's not a photo from an iOS device.

The app is blank bones and frustrating to apply. There is no indicator bar that lets me know what the cloud syncing features are doing, so I have no idea when a backup is complete, and the organizational capabilities are non-existent.

I tin can view all of my photos in the Photos tab, where they're seemingly organized by appointment, merely that's information technology. Information technology lumps all photos together with no sorting options, no way to observe anything, and no alternate views. Since I uploaded my Dropbox content and my iPhone 7 Plus photos, all of that content is lumped together in a giant mess in the Photos department.

There are photos that I synced from my iPhone that I can't find in the My Cloud Home backup. Whether that's because of the poor system or some partial syncing failure, I don't know, and I can't troubleshoot because I tin can't see what's synced, what'southward non, and whether the backup finished successfully. It'south also worth noting that if you have RAW epitome files synced to My Deject Dwelling, the app will not display them.

In the iPhone vii Plus Camera Roll Backup section where my content is really stored, organization is no better. It'southward just a long list of files.

When you view the photos stored on the My Cloud Home, information technology takes a few seconds to load and there'south a definite short delay. This is based on your WiFi connection and the speed of the My Cloud Domicile itself.

There are tools for sharing, opening, renaming, and deleting individual files, but there are no options for mass file direction. If yous have multiple photos you want to delete from the backup, too bad. The app also doesn't seem to delete photos that I have deleted from my photo library.

In a world where our iPhones and iPads are increasingly important and are beginning to supercede PCs, apps like this should offer characteristic parity with their desktop counterparts. It's disappointing that the iOS app is lacking to the point of being nigh unusable for anything but uploading photos.

Mac App

The Mac app is meliorate than the iOS app. It installs a Western Digital bill of fare bar and makes the My Cloud Dwelling house accessible every bit an attached bulldoze, then yous're substantially using Finder for all file direction needs.

You can elevate and drop files to My Cloud Domicile from Finder, you can view everything with Finder's organizational tools, and you lot can search for content through Finder. This setup is simple to utilise and it makes it easy to find, upload, share, and access all of the content that's stored on the My Cloud Dwelling.

The My Cloud Domicile Mac app also makes a correct-click sync selection available for all files, so you can correct-click on something and select the "Sync to My Cloud" feature to upload information technology immediately.

My Cloud Dwelling house tin can be used equally a Time Machine fill-in option for a Mac, just I wasn't a fan of how Fourth dimension Machine backups were handled. Fourth dimension Machine backups are stored in a shared folder on the network with no password protection (encryption wasn't available), which means your backups are accessible on whatever calculator that is connected to your dwelling house Wi-Fi -- not just your own.

That's fine if you're the sole user of your Wi-Fi network, but it's non always ideal when you accept multiple people in the domicile or when guests are visiting. This may not be an issue for some users, though, and according to Western Digital, it'due south congenital this way to let users to back up all computers connected to the network with the content stored in a single identify.

Every bit for Time Machine backups themselves, it obviously takes a long time to do a fill-in over a Wi-Fi connection. I had to leave mine on overnight and it did neglect a several times before it managed to complete a fill-in.

I also idea Western Digital'due south documentation in general for the My Deject Abode was poor. For Time Machine backups, as an case, information technology basically just redirects to Apple's own support document. A device similar this needs better support and documentation for users.

I had some other complaints near the Mac app. In that location was an update during the grade of my testing and it instructed me to download an update, only gave no indication of what was new. Then it sent me an email letting me know an update had been installed, once again with no data.

In that location'due south also a section of the Mac app for "Apps," which I initially thought was for apps that can be installed on the My Deject Abode, but it's non. Information technology's for installing apps on direct-fastened storage devices like the My Passport.

That's because the WD Discovery app is for multiple Western Digital devices, which means WD's deject product isn't even getting its ain defended app.

Web Interface

My Deject Home is also accessible through the web, and the web interface is decent. It's similar to Dropbox in that it offers a list of all of the files on a device along with Photos and an Activity listing so you can come across what was uploaded when.

It has a search feature so you tin search for specific files, multiple view options, and tools for adding services and change business relationship settings. You can add files from the website, and then it'due south actually one of the better ways to access the device if you lot don't demand to brand an iPhone/Mac backup.

Other Features

In improver to using the My Cloud Home equally a backup solution for iOS devices, Macs, and your online cloud storage services, in that location are also options to enable IFTTT and a Plex Server on the My Cloud Dwelling.

With Plex Server, you can upload content like videos and photos to the My Cloud Habitation and so stream it to any iOS device or Apple TV through the Plex app. Plex streaming, like all file transfers to this device, is reliant on your Wi-Fi connection speed.

Bottom Line

I wanted to like the My Cloud Home because I want there to be a uncomplicated, intuitive, easy-to-utilize NAS backup solution for people who merely want to store their stuff and get to it from any device, but there were too many caveats with the apps.

The My Cloud Habitation is elementary enough to utilise for basic purposes like uploading files and making backups, only the app interfaces are lacking features and demand updating. In its current incarnation, I think the My Cloud Home is generally more than frustrating to use than cloud-only solutions like Dropbox or Google Drive, but I have seen some positive reviews for the device on Best Buy from customers who like the simplicity of the device and don't mind the apps.

During my testing, the My Cloud Abode was reliable, remained accessible, and didn't disconnect, which is a plus. It's an okay file storage solution for use with a Mac or via the web, just I wouldn't recommend it on iOS devices because of the app, nor would I use information technology for Time Machine backups due to both connectedness failures and privacy issues.

For people who like the idea of having a network-attached local storage device as a cloud alternative for things like backups and file storage, there are better options out at that place from companies like Synology and QNAP. These products aren't as unproblematic as the My Cloud Habitation and information technology will take quite a few more googling sessions to learn all the ins and outs, only these other devices are more robust, accept better apps for the well-nigh function, and ultimately offer a lot more features than are included with the My Cloud Home.

How to Buy

The My Cloud Home tin be purchased from Best Purchase. Prices start at $160 for the 2TB version.

Note: Western Digital provided MacRumors with a 6TB My Deject Domicile for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received.

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Source: https://www.macrumors.com/review/western-digital-my-cloud-home/

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