"The My Cloud units sport a single Gigabit Ethernet connection and a dual-core processor"
Looks like it also has a USB (3.0?) port.
Cool that it has a Gbit port! Would one be able to connect a lot of these to a single network and access them all easily? Perhaps a very cheap way to have a massive, low power array...
This is a USB Type 'A' port, which makes the My Cloud the host. Therefore, this USB port, although it supports USB 3.0, is designed to attach extra storage to the My Cloud, not for the My Cloud to be connected to a host system via USB.
Considering this is a USB Expansion Port and we're provided with a single Gb port, it would seem that we wouldn't be able to chain-together any My Cloud units. We could connect a regular My Book unit to a My Cloud via USB. This is similar to the My Book Live Duo.
Very attractive price, design and features... now I'm really waiting to see the multi drive solution, I hope it will have attractive price also I don't know why somebody will pay 150+ for only a bare 2-bay NAS enclosure !!...
The only feature I'm missing from these NAS which is very hard to implement also is using both USB and Network in the same time... I want to connect the drive to my main PC with USB and also allow other devices in my home to access it by network... without the need to make the PC runs 24/7... but I can live without that if it like this, Gigabit Ethernet and attractive price...
That seems redundant. If the drive and your main PC are both wired to your router, the Gb connection should be quick enough to rival a USB connection, shouldn't it? And you can map it as a drive so that it would be pretty much indistinguishable from a USB connection.
Can you make a raid of 2 seperate units? If this is power efficient I might use a 4bay of these instead of my planned NAS and then have a very small NAS/Media center PC that can access this over lan
IMO there's not a single good consumer unit yet. Would be awesome if this finally does it. Needs to...well, ideally it would be formatted in NTFS and readable without the NAS. Needs to use swapable standard drives. Needs to be accessible in Windows like accessing another Windows system, and ideally the same in OS X...
Sound like you just want a USB harddrive enclosure, and not a NAS. These can be picked up for under $50 CDN at pretty much any computer store, and online for even less.
We've got a handful of Vantec USB3 enclosures at work. Takes any SATA harddrive, can be formatted with any FS, and connected to any system with USB2 or USB3.
No mention of Samba or FTP support. How would you load this thing or use it as a backup, with an APP? Really. This is no different from any previous existing personal NAS, and none of them work properly. Show me one that can handle file transfers faster than 10MB/s and I'll be impressed. What does not impress me is an iOS app and a catchy name.
Dual Core 1.2Ghz Cortex A9's, with DDR3, looks like it has ethernet built into the SoC, and also a hardware encryption engine (IPSec/SSL). This would be a great router SoC. It would be the Comcerto C2200.
Overall the user interface is pretty clean and works very much like an appliance. The mobile apps are simple and effective. The WD My Cloud comes with WD SmartWare to use the NAS as a backup drive. It works very well. Interesting side note, Windows 7 can only backup to a network drive in the Ultimate and Professional flavors. I tried using the Windows 7 backup utility with the NAS and had no problems with that either.
All in all, works as advertised and is quite simple to setup and use. If you are interested in setting up your own FreeNAS this will be somewhat of a Plain Jane experience, but if you are just interested in a simple NAS that works well out of the box, the WD My Cloud will work well.
Overall the user interface is pretty clean and works very much like an appliance. The mobile apps are simple and effective. The WD My Cloud comes with WD SmartWare to use the NAS as a backup drive. It works very well. Interesting side note, Windows 7 can only backup to a network drive in the Ultimate and Professional flavors. I tried using the Windows 7 backup utility with the NAS and had no problems with that either.
All in all, works as advertised and is quite simple to setup and use. If you are interested in setting up your own FreeNAS this will be somewhat of a Plain Jane experience, but if you are just interested in a simple NAS that works well out of the box, the WD My Cloud is for you.
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nathanddrews - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
"The My Cloud units sport a single Gigabit Ethernet connection and a dual-core processor"Looks like it also has a USB (3.0?) port.
Cool that it has a Gbit port! Would one be able to connect a lot of these to a single network and access them all easily? Perhaps a very cheap way to have a massive, low power array...
Kevin G - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
That doesn't look like a standard USB 3.0 port though.xype - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Logo looks like USB 3.0 Super Speed, though, or?hlmcompany - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
This is a USB Type 'A' port, which makes the My Cloud the host. Therefore, this USB port, although it supports USB 3.0, is designed to attach extra storage to the My Cloud, not for the My Cloud to be connected to a host system via USB.nathanddrews - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Which begs the question: just how many of these can we chain together? How do they interact with one another?Ganesh?
hlmcompany - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Considering this is a USB Expansion Port and we're provided with a single Gb port, it would seem that we wouldn't be able to chain-together any My Cloud units. We could connect a regular My Book unit to a My Cloud via USB. This is similar to the My Book Live Duo.Guspaz - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
I've seen external 2.5" hard drives with a USB-A port on them. It's not unheard of.nathanddrews - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I've got external HDDs that use both A and B ports. I think it only matters if the device is powered by USB, but I don't really know.Xajel - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Very attractive price, design and features... now I'm really waiting to see the multi drive solution, I hope it will have attractive price also I don't know why somebody will pay 150+ for only a bare 2-bay NAS enclosure !!...The only feature I'm missing from these NAS which is very hard to implement also is using both USB and Network in the same time... I want to connect the drive to my main PC with USB and also allow other devices in my home to access it by network... without the need to make the PC runs 24/7... but I can live without that if it like this, Gigabit Ethernet and attractive price...
kineticarl - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
That seems redundant. If the drive and your main PC are both wired to your router, the Gb connection should be quick enough to rival a USB connection, shouldn't it? And you can map it as a drive so that it would be pretty much indistinguishable from a USB connection.Mech0z - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Can you make a raid of 2 seperate units? If this is power efficient I might use a 4bay of these instead of my planned NAS and then have a very small NAS/Media center PC that can access this over lanchubbypanda - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Not possible. As Ganesh speculates, WD would release soon dual bay (with RAID0/1) edition of the same product.ArthurG - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
PRISM approved ? NSA backdoor build-in ?darwinosx - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Yeah I have the same question. If you want real security of personal data you have to roll your own which isn't hard to do.Wolfpup - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
IMO there's not a single good consumer unit yet. Would be awesome if this finally does it. Needs to...well, ideally it would be formatted in NTFS and readable without the NAS. Needs to use swapable standard drives. Needs to be accessible in Windows like accessing another Windows system, and ideally the same in OS X...phoenix_rizzen - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Sound like you just want a USB harddrive enclosure, and not a NAS. These can be picked up for under $50 CDN at pretty much any computer store, and online for even less.We've got a handful of Vantec USB3 enclosures at work. Takes any SATA harddrive, can be formatted with any FS, and connected to any system with USB2 or USB3.
twobitcoder - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
No mention of Samba or FTP support. How would you load this thing or use it as a backup, with an APP? Really. This is no different from any previous existing personal NAS, and none of them work properly. Show me one that can handle file transfers faster than 10MB/s and I'll be impressed. What does not impress me is an iOS app and a catchy name.Gigaplex - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Any gigabit capable one should easily exceed 10MB/s.g1011999 - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
I analyze the kernel source WD releases.The SoC shall be MindSpeed Comcerto 2000 series.
http://www.mindspeed.com/products/cpe-processors/c...
ganeshts - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Very interesting! Can't wait to benchmark that one :)extide - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Dual Core 1.2Ghz Cortex A9's, with DDR3, looks like it has ethernet built into the SoC, and also a hardware encryption engine (IPSec/SSL). This would be a great router SoC. It would be the Comcerto C2200.iwod - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Single Drive, What happens when it fails?Gigaplex - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
It fails.chubbypanda - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
You'd have your stuff already backed up since you pay attention to S.M.A.R.T. readouts (of course, if it's just sudden crash nothing would warn you).vijayaraghavan - Monday, October 7, 2013 - link
Any update, Ganesh, on benchmarking? Has Anandtech received a unit from WD?soliloquist - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Well not sure if anyone is still interested in this product, but I will give you my experience with the WD My Cloud.I tested the transfer speeds to and from the WD My Cloud using an Intel 320 SSD:
From the SSD to the NAS, sustained speeds of 59.5 MB/s.
From the NAS to the SSD, sustained speeds of 85.5 MB/s.
And for anyone that's interested in the power efficiency, I hooked the NAS up to a Kill A Watt EZ and measured the consumption in different states:
Booting:
peek 20 watts
average 10-11 watts
Idle but drive spending - 10-11 watts
Standby (deep sleep) - 7-8 watts
Transferring (reading/writing) - 12-13 watts
Overall the user interface is pretty clean and works very much like an appliance. The mobile apps are simple and effective. The WD My Cloud comes with WD SmartWare to use the NAS as a backup drive. It works very well. Interesting side note, Windows 7 can only backup to a network drive in the Ultimate and Professional flavors. I tried using the Windows 7 backup utility with the NAS and had no problems with that either.
All in all, works as advertised and is quite simple to setup and use. If you are interested in setting up your own FreeNAS this will be somewhat of a Plain Jane experience, but if you are just interested in a simple NAS that works well out of the box, the WD My Cloud will work well.
soliloquist - Saturday, January 4, 2014 - link
Well not sure if anyone is still interested in this product, but I will give you my experience with the WD My Cloud.I tested the transfer speeds to and from the WD My Cloud using an Intel 320 SSD:
From the SSD to the NAS, sustained speeds of 59.5 MB/s.
From the NAS to the SSD, sustained speeds of 85.5 MB/s.
And for anyone that's interested in the power efficiency, I hooked the NAS up to a Kill A Watt EZ and measured the consumption in different states:
Booting:
peek 20 watts
average 10-11 watts
Idle but drive spending - 10-11 watts
Standby (deep sleep) - 7-8 watts
Transferring (reading/writing) - 12-13 watts
Overall the user interface is pretty clean and works very much like an appliance. The mobile apps are simple and effective. The WD My Cloud comes with WD SmartWare to use the NAS as a backup drive. It works very well. Interesting side note, Windows 7 can only backup to a network drive in the Ultimate and Professional flavors. I tried using the Windows 7 backup utility with the NAS and had no problems with that either.
All in all, works as advertised and is quite simple to setup and use. If you are interested in setting up your own FreeNAS this will be somewhat of a Plain Jane experience, but if you are just interested in a simple NAS that works well out of the box, the WD My Cloud is for you.