WD My Cloud worth it?

[kart]

Hi guys,

I am after some feedback on the WD My Cloud to see if it is worth purchasing for my application.
What I am after is a means to store all sort of different files on a cloud. I need to be able to upload photos (inc raw and jpeg) from a camera to the cloud on different devices. I do a fair bit of editing on an iPad and also a MBP.
I would ideally like to be able to connect my iPad to my camera, copy all the photos from the camera up into a cloud storage (not using the iPad internal storage.)
I want to be able to see these photos and documents on all my devices: MBP, iPad, iPhone etc, work on whatever the file is and then sync back up to the cloud.
iCloud offers similar, but takes up too much space on my Mac, and for me defeats the purpose of what I am trying to do.
In the cloud, I also want to store a heap of various documents, eg spreadsheets, word, pdf's etc.

On the surface, it sounds like the WD My Cloud would do the job perfectly, however the only decent reviews I can find on the product are now a couple of years old. The main disappointment for uses seemed to be the lack of usability of the iOS app. From a 2017 review, I read that an iOS device was unable to see RAW photos (something I need to be able to see, download and edit on an iOS device.) I also saw that the iOS app chucked all photos in together and mixed them.
All my photos are in seperate photos, so again, this wouldn't work for me if this is still the case.
I would like opinions on whether the iOS app has updated and significantly improved over the years? or is the WD My Cloud just not what I am looking for?
Can you upload documents to WD My Cloud i.e if I create a word document on my iPad, can I store it on the cloud?

Can anyone provide any other solutions for my applications? Cloud storage seems too expensive (2tb+) and I am still yet to see a service that will fulfil my needs.

TIA.

 

[mrex]

there are now differend kind of ”my cloud” devices from wd. im using their nas solution (few years old) which work fine and all my devices (mac, win, ios, atv, android) work with it and i have access to it all the time from anywhere. it also had ”my cloud app” and e.g. photos from my iphone/ipad/etc are automatically stored to the nas.

there are issues with ios and there will be as long as the ios is such a dumb and restricted using files as you wish and it depends alot on apps you are using. if i need to access to the content i have on the nas, i can use Files app nowadays (wd provides my cloud app to work with files app - im not sure but i think the my cloud app isnt for the new home devices).

however the new my cloud devices for home users (”my cloud home”) are somewhat differend and restricted/missing functions than older devices. if you are going to buy a cloud device, get a real cloud device or a nas that have atleast two drives to be able to keep them sync together (raid1 setup). if one of the drives fails, the other still have the same data. and buy large nas/cloud device enough - e.g. a 8gb nas with two drives running raid1 means that your storage is actually 4gb. two 4gb drives is 8gb but using raid1 drives works as mirrors and if one of the drives fails, you can replace it because the data is on the other drive too and you dont loose anything. if you run them as raid0 and using all the 8gb, if one the drives fails, you are in trouble if you dont have backups.

if you are getting wd my cloud device, be sure to check what exactly it is and what you can do with it. when you read older reviews about ”wd cloud” you get a wrong info of wd my cloud products because the new my cloud home devices wont work exactly the same way as the former my cloud devices. i would rather get a real nas than just a new my cloud home.

before you get any device you also need to decide if you are going to stream from the device (e.g. vids) or editing vids from the device. some devices are cabable e.g. doing transcoding (when streaming), some not and then you need to rely on the client part of transcoding rather the server part and be sure that the client is capable of doing that with or without an app. for example popular plex application. it has only a server side application doing things so if your nas isnt powerful enough, your vids need to be already transcoded/encoded to the right format or you cant watch the vid straight from your nas and you need to run the plex on your computer. my own nas isnt powerul enough to transcode while watching a vid but vlc app on my atv does it just fine. im not able to use plex, but lucky i dont need it or want it either. vlc works great. and it is free.

if you are just keeping is as a storage, not streaming or editing vids from it, a cheaper cloud/nas device works well, but you need to check the functionality of the apps you need or using. check that is has protocols to connect (eg. smb) and not only work through the app the manufacturer provides.

im not sure but i think the new ”my cloud home” works only via cloud access and cannot hence to be connected via smb and use it as a drive locally and it relies on the app wd provides. not the best product to consider, imo. just checked - yes, it has no nas features and only way to share is to use ”public” folder. there is also ”my cloud home duo” which provides raid1, but unfortunately it works the same way as the other ”my cloud home” devices - those are not as a real nases but rather easy way for a home user to have a cloud at home (but not as easy if you want to use it for something). those are cheap for sure, but it has a price mssing functionalities.

my advice is to get a nas and depending on what you need to do with it, check the technical specs (streaming straight from the nas, editing vids from the nas or just storing files on it). and fo sure, what ever you buy, get a device with raid1 (or similar if more than two drives) unless you are making backups all the time to another device.