WD My Cloud 2TB Personal Cloud Storage Review

Final Thoughts
WD is clearly attempting to compete with online services with this and its other cloud storage offerings. The main selling proposition is that you can spend $150-$250 and have really fast local storage at home and easily-accessed storage from anywhere else there is Internet.

I think the value proposition of price per gigabyte storage space is a solid one. Dropbox would run $500/yr for 500 GB. OneDrive/SkyDrive is $100/yr for 200 GB. Google Drive is $120/yr for 1 TB. In terms of having remotely-accessible storage, a cloud storage NAS like the MyCloud is a bargain.

However, the most valuable features of the MyCloud are still home network centered. UPNP/DLNA media playback, automated backups, etc. Automatic syncing, mobile picture backup, and easy sharing are features of the cloud services that cloud storage doesn’t quite seem to have yet. Especially that last one: that’s a problem that, to my knowledge, hasn’t been solved well yet.

These days, I review things from primarily an OS X and Android standpoint because those are what I use primarily. OS X is a supported platform for MyCloud, so my frustrations are certainly merited. The MyCloud-OS X interaction leaves much to be desired, but the Android experience is acceptable.

Overall ThinkComputers gives the WD My Cloud 2TB Personal Cloud Storage a 7 out of 10 score.

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Pros:
– Super simple plug-in-and-go setup
– USB 3.0 for expansion
– Mobile app auto-sync is pretty slick
– WD2GO system makes users not have to think about how to get to their data

Cons:
– Seemingly no way to opt out of WD2GO
– Horrible issues getting WD2GO to work on OS X
– Unable to connect remotely on OS X
– Two year warranty when the drive instead normally has a three year warranty

Suggested Improvements
– Fix the OS X issues
— Get away from Java applets
— Get away from Adobe Air
— Using HTML5 and a native or Java fat client would greatly improve the user experience
– Implement automatic backup of media from mobile devices
– Give users a way to share access somehow

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