For most home users, a single drive will do the job just fine. If you run a business or have a lot of mission-critical data, then consider the dual drive but as you would expect, they are substantially more expensive. As for the review unit we were sent, it is a single drive, 4TB model. That, in my opinion, is perfect for a family home.
Physically, the My Cloud measures 6.91 x 2.09 x 5.51 inches (H x W x D) or 175.5 x 53 x 140mm in new money. It weighs 2.19 pounds (1kg) but the weight will vary slightly based on the size of the drive installed. The casing is a dual-tone white and silver with a LED bar splitting the two finishes to indicate that the device is powered.
The back of the My Cloud is where you will find your connections. There is a standard Ethernet connection as well as a USB 3.0 port. The power port is also found here along with a Kensington lock port.
Physical Setup
Setting up the WD My Cloud is very easy and only takes a few minutes. First, you will need to connect the provided Ethernet cable to your network router or a hotspot in your home that you can connect to and get to your local network and Internet. For me, my Comcast router is not in an ideal place to add another item directly so I connected it up to one of my Google WiFi hotspots, which has an Ethernet port available. The net result was the same: After plugging the My Cloud into power, it was immediately on my network and available to use after my app configuration.
Like any other network device, the My Cloud automatically got an IP address my network’s DHCP pool. There was no manual configuration required nor any real effort required frankly. You literally plug it in and it is ready to go.
To be clear, if you want, you can set up the My Cloud to connect directly to a PC or Mac and use it for external storage. All you need to do is connect the drive to your computer via a USB 3.0 cable. Clearly, you lose some of the benefits that the product offers like being able to access your drive from outside your network, but if you only want mass storage, this is a good solution for it.
Once you have the My Cloud connected to your network and powered up, the white LED should be steady. That is your indicator that it is ready to use. Now go to your PC or Mac and navigate to mycloud.com/hello to complete the setup process online. In order to use the cloud services, you will have to register a My Cloud account. During that process, you will be prompted for the unique PIN of your device which will register that device to you with you as the primary user of it. The whole process took me less than 10 minutes to complete and once you are done, you will be able to download the desktop app and there are links to the App Store and Google Play Store to download the respective mobile apps.
The Magic of The Apps
The real magic of the WD My Cloud is the apps. WD makes apps for Windows and Mac on the desktop while they also have Android and iOS apps too. The apps not only allow your computer to access your data on your My Cloud – as do the mobile apps – but also allow you to configure routine backups of your PC or Mac to it.
Is there a way to automatically backup Android device files other than photos/videos/music (such as PDFs or office documents)?