A Personal Cloud System! It’s something I always dreamt of having. I think I have a million pictures. Running out of storage on your phone, personal computer is something everyone cries over. And me being a photographer, find it very hard to manage my storage and organization of my data. Although we all use external hard drives to backup out data, finding it is such a huge task. And while you are traveling, or you are on the run and you still need to access your data, there is no chance in the world you can do it!
As always, Western Digital’s new product has our back now! My Cloud Home of Western Digital is a personal cloud storage system that is network-attached and provides privacy and the security of local storage. It comes in options ranging from 2TB up to 16TB that can be excellent for both personal use as well as for business purpose. I am currently using a 4 TB version which is mirror Raid. You can easily plug it to your router and it will be accessible to you through your home network. It is extremely easy to setup and WD has come up with developed softwares and apps that has facilitated its use for users.
The design is My Cloud Home Duo has a blocky body with sharp edges is is textured and metallic. There is a status indicator in the front and the top and bottom have grilles for air circulation. It has surely a striking look which comes a surprise considering that most network appliances are mostly hidden away.
On the inside, it comes with 1.4HGz ARM-based Realtek RTD1296 processor with Cortex-A53 cores, plus a Mali-T820 GPU. This processor is designed for storage servers as well as media transcoding and streaming boxes. There’s also 1GB of RAM, and predictably, WD uses one of its own Red series drives, which are optimised for network-attached storage. Capacity options range from 2TB to 8TB for the single-drive My Cloud Home, and 4TB to 16TB (in mirrored RAID) for the larger My Cloud Home Duo. Only the latter can be opened for its drives to be swapped out.
With the box comes a drive, a power adapter, a CAT 5E Ethernet cable, a warranty leaflet and a paper that consists of the drive’s unique security key and pictorial setup manual.
The mobile app can easily backup your photos and videos from your smartphone to the Home Duo. The app can also download files from the Home Duo to your phones and it will also create a Web link to share the files with others if you wish to. The best part is that you can also invite others to use its storage by sending email through the app. Every invitee who accepts will get a private account but with limited privileges. For example, they cannot invite other people. The WD Home Duo also has a desktop app for both Mac and Windows that allows you to create backup folders from the desktop to the Duo. This makes it extremely convenient as you can access it through your mobile or the desktop app, along with Web interface as well.
Apart from all the above, My Cloud Home also has the options to enable IFTTTT and a Plex server on the Home Duo. This allows you to upload content such as videos and photos to the Home Duo and then you can stream them on any iOS device or Apply TV via the Plex app, which is reliant on your Wi-Fi connection speed.
There is a thin horizontal LED strip in the front that allows you to know when the drive is up and running, and on the backside you will find connectivity options. Apart from these are the slim power button, two USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and a reset button.
