WD My Passport 4TB Portable External HDD - USB 3.2 Gen 1, White. With so many devices, there’s no way to have everything in one spot for the entire family to enjoy.Display Unit Apple 13 Macbook Air (Space Grey) - Apple M1 chip with 8core CPU. The worst problem is sharing photos. Housed in an aluminum enclosure, the G-DRIVE G1 features data transfer rates up to 226MB/s and arotational speed of 7200 rpm, both of which allow for quick file access and fast data.Even something as simple as streaming my iTunes movie library requires setup.One of the most obvious solutions to this problem is to get a NAS (network attached storage) box. Accessing from a Mac and smartphones is possible, but it’s not as straightforward, requiring specific apps and jumping through a few hoops.While this has been a functional solution, it’s still problematic. This isn’t as easy as it sounds because that setup only really works for other Windows PCs. I’ve had to set up network shares that everyone can access and also had to ensure that the PC is running 24/7.If setup correctly, all your data will simply be accessible from anywhere in the world and on any device and you’ll never have to think about it again.Hooking the MyCloud unit up to my router was as easy as plugging in the bundled ethernet cable to the device and my router, but this is where the challenge really starts.The setup process as advertised by WD on the box is a 3-step one. Install it somewhere in your house, plug it into your router/network switch and then forget that it physically exists. You do not carry this around with you when you go from place to place.The MyCloud device variants offer up to 8 TB of storage.As the name implies, think of the MyCloud as your own little personal cloud storage box.There is no easy way to enable any of this.Or rather, enabling this is very easy, but only if you know what you’re doing.I won’t bore you with the details of the setup process. An average user is not going to know about the dangers of giving everyone admin privileges, securing the account, etc.Moving on, the drive supports several features, including the option to host a DLNA server, your iTunes library, etc. I know that I need to fix its IP, assign privilege levels for accounts, etc.There is no way that an average user is going to know how to do this and I do wish that WD’s messaging around this was clearer. The initial setup process only initialises the unit and sets up a network-connected storage hub that’s invisible to your devices unless you know what you’re doing.As a power user, I knew that I needed to set up network shares, create multiple user accounts, one for every person in the house, and a separate guest account.
There were no random reboots, connection issues or anything else. Once set up, the device worked like a charm. Data transfer speeds easily hit over 90 Mbps on LAN and 50 Mbps over Wi-Fi. As a bonus, the MyCloud consumes a fraction of the power that my PC consumes, so my electricity bill isn't going to shoot through the roof.It still took me a few days to sort out all the kinks in the system, but once sorted, it was easy to forget that the device even existed.Since I use some relatively fancy network hardware, speeds were amazing. If all the above is gibberish, then any instructions I give will also be gibberish.On the rear you will find the gigabit Ethernet port and a USB 3.0 portAfter setup, my home storage environment looked something like this:-All devices that need access to the data on the MyCloud drive can now access it over the home network.-All MacBooks will now automatically backup their data to the MyCloud drive.-Movies and music stored on iTunes are now accessible to everyone.-All iPhones now backup to the MyCloud drive.-All photos are accessible from anywhere to all members of my family.-Guests can access a limited collection of photos, music and movies.-Downloads automatically go to the MyCloud drive.-The Xbox One S can access the media library and can now stream movies to the TV at any time.-I would get email alerts when anything happened to the MyCloud drive, even a power outage.With this one device and a few days of tinkering, I’ve vastly streamlined data use in my house and made it convenient for anyone to use and access data storage with minimal fuss. If all the data is stored on the MyCloud and you lose the MyCloud, you’ve lost all your data.Thankfully, WD does provide a ‘safepoint’ feature that makes it easy to setup a scheduled backup of data to either another USB drive or a network location. Putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, is never a good thing. The device UI could certainly have been clearer with its messaging.One thing that worries me with the MyCloud is that you’ll still need yet another storage unit to ensure that you have a backup of the data on the MyCloud. I didn't have any file transfer issues myself, however, and it's possible that this was a one-off. He only realised that all was not well when he looked for a particular file and found the folder to be blank. One of my colleagues who owns a similar MyCloud unit did complain that the USB file transfer option on the unit was iffy and that he had issues transferring files to the device. The problem is that there's no clear indicator that files are being transferred, and neither are there error messages when something goes wrong. G Technology External Hard Drive Upgrade From AIt’s not as powerful or feature-rich as a proper NAS unit but it doesn’t need to be and it's also much cheaper.The pricing is very reasonable. As an upgrade from a dumb hard drive, the WD MyCloud shines. It also proved to be eminently reliable, which is important when dealing with our precious data stores. It’s the perfect upgrade from a regular portable hard disk and streamlines data use. In an ideal world, I’d love for an engineer to pop over, help with the initial setup and configure all my devices as needed. If it doesn’t do that, you’re not going to like it.This is the kind of experience that should accompany a WD MyCloud purchase, and it’s the only way it’ll ever go mainstream. As an average user, you’re only concerned that it cools your room and that it’s easy to control. You don’t need to know how to install the AC or even how it works. Dubstep music software for macThis is a great product that might simply die out for lack of adequate support. It’s also an entirely new class of device whose potential is frustratingly obfuscated by an unintuitive setup process. For a device that's marketed as a mainstream, consumer-centric device, the entry barrier is simply too high.
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