The reason I bought Western Digital MyCloud was for backing up my old WD MyBook 3TB external hard drive, which was almost full and some of the files got corrupted from using NTFS file system on a Mac OSX. The second reason was the price range (less than S$400) for NAS solution between 3-4 TB capacity.
After buying the product, here is my personal review:
Packaging and Contents
The box size is about 2 to 3 times bigger than the size of MyCloud drive it self. There are 2 sub containers inside the box which consist of the MyCloud drive container and the peripherals container. The peripherals container uses a folded low cost brown card-board that contains the electric power adapter, cat 5e Ethernet cable and some documents (manual book and warranty card). The included Ethernet cable is 1.5m long so I can put my MyCloud a bit further from my WiFi router if I need to. But the power adapter cord also has 1.5m long, so make sure the MyCloud position is close enough to the electricity outlet.
The manual instruction has a very simple initial instruction set. The more detail instruction and manual need to be downloaded over the internet in a PDF format.
The Unit
I like the white-coloured body design of MyCloud which looks more elegant compare to my old black coloured MyBook 3TB. Like the previous WD products, there is air ventilation on the top for flowing the hot air out of the device (because the hot air will always flow to the top).
In the front side, there is only one multicoloured LED light as an indicator. In the backside, there is a Reset button hole, USB 3.0 expansion port, Gigabit Ethernet, power plug and cable lock port. I think it is the simplest array of I/O for portable NAS. I didn’t open the MyCloud enclosure, but from what I understand, this version of MyCloud uses WD Caviar RED edition, which is a server grade Hard Drive that has a very long lifetime. It supposed to be much better compared to MyBook 3TB which uses WD Caviar GREEN edition.
Installation
It is quite simple to set it up and run it. Without reading the manual, I simply plug the cables (the power adapter and the LAN cable) and power it up. I connected MyCloud directly into my Wifi Router using LAN, as well as My Macbook pro also connected to the WiFi Router using CAT6 LAN cable to maximise the network access performance. Of course I need to make sure first whether my Mac is really connected at 1Gbps LAN access. And also I turned off my Mac’s Wifi.
Next, I read the manual to follow the instruction. I was quite afraid because there is no direct USB connection to this device, it is totally rely on Ethernet connection. That means, once we make a mess with the network setting, and causing unable to connect through Ethernet, then it will be a horrible story. But there is a troubleshoot if something like that happened, which can be done by reset all setting through small hole button.
There is no CD driver included to install the driver. All of the drivers and the necessary software can be downloaded from the Western Digital website. After download them, I run the MyCloud setup for Mac first. In this initial setup, I was asked to enter the main username and password which will be used to access MyCloud from web services or mobile apps. That simple, and MyCloud is ready to use.
Right after the setup is finished, I can browse MyCloud from Mac’s finder and access it’s shared folder using AFP (Apple Filing Protocol). Because that’s the default network drive connection used by Apple. And yes, I can read and write to that shared folder. I continued installing the MyCloud Desktop for Mac and WD Quick View for Mac. The Desktop for Mac software is a Java based file browser which can detect MyCloud’s IP address automatically and browse the drive contents inside it. The WD Quick View is a taskbar application to access common instruction and data form MyCloud such as it’s status, availability, free space, temperature, shutdown, alerts and many more.
First Impression
After doing the very simple installation, I was quite impressed with how simple this kind of NAS can be used and configured. It just works. The noise level is very low. I cannot even hear the fan noise from 2m of distance. The heat level from the top side is quite warm, but I can make sure that my Macbook Pro is hotter than the air temperature that comes from the MyCloud.
Following the process, I went to the Quick View and there is a firmware update. The firmware update was run over the air and performed smoothly without any difficulties. After the firmware was updated, MyCloud will be rebooted automatically. Reboot time takes around 2-3 minutes from the blinking white colour indicator light until it turns into blue colour.
Benchmark Test
Before I did anything to this MyCloud, I run 2 disk benchmark software to test MyCloud disk performance. They are Blackmagic Disk Benchmark, which test disk video streams with various formats and specifications; and the second one is XBench, the general benchmarking tool for Mac including disk test.
I run those applications under a Macbook pro 13” mid 2009 with 2.5Ghz Core2duo processor and 8GB RAM. My Macbook pro was connected to MyCloud through gigabit Ethernet and using AFP.
1. Blackmagic Disk Benchmark
Average write: 27MBps
Average read: 65MBps
2. XBench disk test
Sequential
Uncached write 4K blocks: 3.06 MBps
Uncached write 256K blocks: 23.72 MBps
Uncached read 4K blocks: 6.04 MBps
Uncached read 256K blocks: 53.09 MBps
Random
Uncached write 4K blocks: 3.2 MBps
Uncached write 256K blocks: 24.28 MBps
Uncached read 4K blocks: 4.01 MBps
Uncached read 256K blocks: 38.7 MBps
Theoretically, the maximum transfer speed I can get from MyCloud to Macbook is limited by the speed of gigabit ethernet, which is 1 Gb/s or 128 GB/s (in bytes). But by this simple test, I concluded that the average performance is 25 MB/s for writing and 64 MB/s for reading.
Ok, simple test finished. Now let’s try the other features.
Time Machine Backup
Time Machine Backup is feature I always wanted since long time ago. Before I bought this MyCloud, I never backup my Macbook’s data into anywhere and expecting miracles every day.
Surprisingly, right after I enter the Time Machine setup in my Mac, the MyCloud Time Machine is already detected and ready to be chosen. I just select that only option and… it just run and did a perfect backup for all of my Macbook’s data. My Macbook has 250GB drive, so the initial backup spend around 235GB of MyCloud’s space. Fair enough. And all of this full initial backup finished within one night.
Web Interface
Next, I went to its web interface to modify some of its configuration such as adding the shared folder or adding new users. The web interface is pretty simple and quite nice to see. Within its black colour theme, it only shows what we really need to see and set, such as: free capacity, user count, shared folder count, error alert, USB connectivity, and some setting categories.
Here are the setting categories:
Users:
This is for managing user accounts for accessing the files through various services (such as AFP, FTP, SMB or NFS protocols).
Shared Folders:
This is for managing shared folders other than Public and Time Machine folder.
We can also specify whether those folders are private or public.
Cloud Access:
This is for managing the user’s access to the mobile apps.
Safe Point:
This is for managing the snapshot of MyCloud’s drive. You can make a snapshot backup of your MyCloud if needed, but of course it will sacrifice your storage.
Settings:
Most of the preferences and detailed settings are stored here. It contains various network configuration such as Device name, enabling Time Machine, enabling NTP service, SSH or FTP service, IP Address settings; Services configuration such as DLNA or iTunes service; Utilities configuration such as system diagnostic, shutdown, restart, analyse, restore, notification, firmware update and many more.
However, compared to other NAS brands like Synology or D-Link, MyCloud has the simplest configuration yet easiest to setup especially for novice users.
Application
I wanted to install and run application or services inside MyCloud such as Torrent Client, Dropbox client, or Google Drive client. Apparently there is no such feature in this product. I was quite disappointed, because I knew that the expensive version of MyCloud (MyCloud EX) can install 3rd party apps and services. Later on I knew that we can do it manually through SSH Root. Some of the users out there already tried to install some apps like Transmission or RTorrent inside MyCloud. But it is really not recommended to try if you don’t have a very good knowledge and experience in managing Linux in command line.
SSH
Wait what is SSH?
SSH is a Secure Shell for command line remote communication between computer devices. With SSH, we can control most of the basic command to other devices, such as accessing files, executing binaries, etc. There is a configuration to enable SSH feature in the MyCloud, and you will be given a default root password to access its SSH terminal. But you will be notified that you must use it by your own risk, and the guarantee will be voided if we modify its files or systems using SSH. If you really know what are you doing with SSH, you can do anything like you have a very small and portable Ubuntu Linux device. You can even install like database servers, web servers, or anything else if you want, as long as you know how to do it and know how to troubleshoot if something happened.
iTunes
This feature used to make me curious. I was wondering how it will work in my Apple devices especially for my Apple TV. Can I connect directly to this NAS without turning on my Macbook?
Well after reading and trying this feature over Mac’s iTunes, now I’m pretty sure that the answer is NO. MyCloud only provides the iTunes repository or “library folder” inside the MyCloud drive and it can be accessed by iTunes apps. Later on, iTunes apps will share it to Shared iTunes over the network. Without running the iTunes app, it will be useless.
The only benefit is, I don’t need to store all of my songs, videos and media inside my local Macbook. I can put it over the network, and set some free space inside my local storage.
Streaming Media
Other than iTunes repository, there is DLNA service that I can use to stream video, music and photo library over network. The different between file transfer protocols is all the media files are already indexed and organised although the files location is spread over folders. I’m sure that there is a service that always trace and do the media files indexing process and put it into the MyCloud DLNA database, which can be accessed easily by various DLNA supported apps. From this kind of apps, we can stream it to another devices such as Apple TV through AirPlay. Since I think I will not use this feature so much, so I just skip it.
Storage Expansion
This is one of the reason that made me bought this thing. Storage Expansion means we can plug other USB Storage devices such as any other external USB hard drives or thumbdrives into MyCloud. MyCloud will recognise and assign it as a shared folder which we can access from network. MyCloud it self can read and write various file systems such as: NTFS, HFS+, Ext3, Ext4, FAT, FAT32 any many more. When I knew this feature, I imagined that after I backup the entire MyBook data into MyCloud, I will reformat MyBook into Ext3 and plug it into MyCloud so I can have 7TB of Cloud storage. Or maybe I can do mirror backup using RSync from MyCloud to MyBook.
Backup Process
This is the scariest task for me, the main purpose on why I bought MyCloud device, and here is the story:
My WD MyBook 3TB was using NTFS file system which was always accessed by Macbook Pro through Paragon’s NTFS driver. And after using it for a long time, somehow I got trouble when accessing MyBook drive. Every time I plug the MyBook USB into My Macbook, suddenly it will be disconnected and difficult to access it unless I shut off its power and turn it on again. I was really afraid that I will lost all of my precious data, especially my Photo libraries.
I need to backup the whole 2.9TB of data which mostly contains more than 400GB of Apple Aperture Photo Libraries, more than 50,000 photos and 1,8 millions of files; and the other gigantic files. For me this photo library is the most important things to backup compared to other files.
I didn’t do synchronised backup such as RSync because I want to select files or folders I really need to backup, and remove unnecessary files or folders.
To be honest, doing this backup process is quite frustrating. I did it using various ways to make it finished.
1. MyBook (USB) -> Macbook -> MyCloud (Ethernet) over Finder
For safety reason, I tried to disable Paragon’s NTFS driver and rely on OSX’s built in NTFS read only driver. Surprisingly, the NTFS read driver can read MyBook’s NTFS partition perfectly without disconnection.
I did the copy process through OSX’s Finders. And I was surprised because it took a lot of time to analyse the folder. I realised that this happened because in the GUI based explorer, it will check the directories content to estimate the process time.
It took few hours to do the analysis process, but somehow suddenly the process was terminated in the middle of copying (maybe after more than ten thousand files copied) because of connection time out. I was really confused. Not only that termination. Even it took a long time to access web interface now, and I cannot access the folder through AFP.
So I just tried the other way.
2. MyBook (USB) -> MyCloud (USB) over SSH
The 2nd way is by copying the file directly from MyCloud through SSH. As I mentioned above, my MyBook uses NTFS file system which is a bit broken because I always accessed it from Mac, which is not really optimised to do read write into NTFS.
By wishing that MyCloud will detect the NTFS drive of MyBook, I plugged MyBook into MyCloud’s USB3. I opened a Terminal apps in my Macbook, and execute SSH command to MyCloud.
Sadly, the mounting process took a lot of time, and suddenly the MyBook was disconnected. Every time I tried to plug the MyBook into MyCloud, always be like that. And the SSH terminal hang. The behaviour is similar with the Paragon NTFS driver I used before. I assumed the MyCloud’s NTFS read write driver also triggered that issue.
So I just tried the other way.
3. MyBook (USB) -> Macbook -> MyCloud (Ethernet) over FTP
This time I tried to enable FTP service and try to copy data from MyBook into MyCloud through FTP Client application. In this case I used Transmit apps.
The copy process seems ok except it was veeery slow. The average copying speed was only upto 6MB/s. I was wondering how much time I need to copy 2TB of data?
Other than slow issue, I found some connection time out while copying some files from FTP, and the worse part was sometime it was disconnected.
I was still wondering why when I try to copy this large amount of photo library, MyCloud is always disconnected suddenly.
4. MyBook (USB) -> Macbook -> MyCloud (Ethernet) over NFS
I tried to use another protocol named NFS. NFS is a primitive Unix Network File System protocol which supposed to be very stable. Luckily, MyCloud has this protocol inside although its not perfectly configured. I still needed to modify the NFS configuration through SSH terminal. After modifying the configuration, I restarted the nfsd service, and it works. I can connect through MyCloud using NFS from Mac’s Finder.
It looks like NFS is a bit faster compared to AFP I used before to access MyCloud. I can feel it from the mounting process speed. Then I started the copy process.
Well unfortunately, the result was the same with using AFP or FTP. I encountered a lot of “server not responding” or “time out” issue in the middle of copying process. This was very irritating and made my faith in WD fell down to the bottom of the earth.
This time, I didn’t try other way. I tried to analyse what was happening in the MyCloud’s process while copying. So I use SSH to remote the MyCloud and monitor the process using top and ps command (linux commands). I found some suspects!
When the copy process was running, I saw that there are some processes that also took a lot of CPU resource up to 50-100%. This is why the AFP, FTP or even NFS daemon service process was not responding. These processed are: media scanning and indexing, disk space calculation, and web services (which I always open in the web browser).
Since I understand that MyCloud only uses dual core mobile processor, of course by running those services simultaneously will drop CPU resource into the limit.
Those services is actually needed by MyCloud for detecting and indexing all of the image files (jpg, png, or gif files) into its database as it will be used by the mobile apps. Looks like this service tried to scan all of my gigantic photo libraries being copied at the time, and because the file amount is really huge, the service take a lot of CPU power and become unstable. Sometimes I got an alert notification that the media scanning is stopped or crashed. Well, it will be a homework for WD’s application developer.
The other services like disk usage is used for calculating every shared folder free space. It will execute Linux’s df or du command. Sometime it takes 20-30% of CPU power; wdnotifier and daap (for iTunes service) also took upto 50% of CPU power.
So I disabled all of those services temporarily until my backup process is finished.
The result was amazing! With NFS protocol, I can copy that gigantic photo libraries without any disruption or disconnection with transfer bandwidth upto 20MB/s.
5. MyBook (USB) -> Macbook -> MyCloud (Ethernet) over SMB
I realised that I forgot to try SMB protocol, which previously only effective to be used in Windows environment. But I was wrong. When I tried to connect to MyCloud using SMB with my Macbook, I quite surprised that the network drive mounting process was very fast! Even faster than AFP it self. And surprisingly when I tested it using Blackmagic Disk Test, It reached 80Mb/s read and write!!
Then I simply continued the backup process using SMB.
Common Usage
After backup process is finished, I just use MyCloud as network drive that I can access from anywhere, from my Macbook at home, from my Office, or using my iPhone apps.
In Macbook, I can access it as a mapped network folder that behaved like a normal drive.
In Mobile Apps, I can access directly to the files and folders and I can do most basic operation such as copy, move or delete files; share files to other people; or even play videos or musics.
Other than that, there is an apps specific for photo usage. It has feature to upload your photo automatically into your MyCloud, edit and share it right from the apps. Very convenient.
I also can browse from anonymous PC using wd2go website. I just need to login, and browse all of my files over the web browser.
Conclusion
MyCloud is perfect for common user that want to start a cloud lifestyle and fill the files sequentially. IMHO, it is not suite for people who want to do a massive backup especially media files such as photos, musics or videos in a gigantic amount, because it will make the CPU power raise into maximum and terminate the whole transferring process. It needs a good technical skill to find a workaround of this issue, which is turning off all of those services while backuping.
The basic feature is already there, media streaming, iTunes repository, internet access, various network file protocols available, the USB storage expansion which can be accessed from network and internet too, the capability of read and write various file systems, Time Machine backup for OSX, and very easy to use and configure.
The disk read and write through network protocol like SMB should reach 60-80MB/s read or write.
MyCloud is a very good hardware and price tag. But IMHO, WD still needs to improve its firmware due to some issues like what I faced.
Pros:
Basic standard NAS features
Time Machine backup
iTunes repository
Internet access through wd2go website
DLNA service
Supports a lot of file formats
Supports AFP, SMB, FTP and NFS protocols
Storage expansion through USB 3.0
SSH access (for advanced usage)
Server Grade NAS HDD
Quite fast transfer speed, up to 60-80MB/s (depends on the data alocations)
Affordable price: 4TB: S$399, 3TB: S$289, and 2TB: S$239
Cons:
The web interface is very slow
No 3rd party apps
Some services can eat up the CPU resources
No built in WiFi
The settings are too basic for advanced usage
Disclaimer: This review is written by Stefanus Wayanartha and published here with his permission.
Leave A Comment