The My Cloud Home 8TB Single Drive costs £247.65 from Amazon
With university students heading back soon, we have hundreds of photos, music, movies and more important that dissertation we all have to do. Having a backup is more important than ever and with USB’s going missing or breaking you need an alternative and storage devices and with 3 years at uni sometimes you need something better in terms of storage.
Here at What Mobile you may remember recently we reviewed the My Passport External hard drive by Western Digital. Well by the same company we have the been given the My Cloud Home which is like a cloud storage service however what you have here is a physical device for your home.
What makes the My Cloud Home Unique is not only does it plug into your router but allows you to connect any device you have at home and also allows you to access your stored files via the internet so you can store any file and access it anywhere and anytime.
So the My Cloud Home comes in the sizes of 2TB-8TB and single or Double Drive we have been given the 8TB single drive. The design is quite stylish with half being a white polished and the other half being a patterned silver design. I personally think this is very classy looking considering what my router looks like as both are normally placed out of view. My only negative of the device is the White Polished part scratched very easy even though I didn’t really do anything to mark it.
On the device, you will find an Ethernet with a power inlet and USB host port. In the box, you also get a power adapter & CAT 5E Ethernet cable. You also get the unique security key and set instructions on the other side.
So set-up is quite simple, place next to the router and use the Ethernet cable to connect the two. Once you plug it in your see the light in the middle on the front of the device flash and then have a solid light. Then head to the website on the instruction sheet and create your account. Once done the dive is associated with your account. Make sure you type in the Unique security key and also download the discovery program and the My Cloud Home app to get any of your devices connected. On your PC you will see the device marked as the Z Drive but you may find you need the discovery app running in the background when moving files.
As you store files accessing them when on the move is very similar to those who use cloud storage apps like Google Drive. Which is a great advantage as am on the move a lot with work so having my files available when I need them is a great plus point. One thing I did notice is any pictures taken on your phone are automatically backed up but this is not the case for video or if you used one of the office apps on your phone.
The negative points of using this product are you cannot set read-only permission to some files. I also found working out how much space is being used was also a bit of an issue. I also found assigning permissions to files so they are private for the family member not possible so all files can be viewed which I do not like. I also found the lack of security and the fact you do not know how much file space left the main issues here. Personally, I also found the speed of transferring files to be quite slow but if you can handle that then this is a good product.
The aside it works without an internet connection which its supposed to do so if they fixed the security and it allowed you to manage permissions this product would have got a 5-star review.
Well if you’re looking for a simplified storage solution for those who are not very technical this is a product for you. If your skill base in IT is higher than most you will not get on with this device as well as you will hate the speed to download.
If you’re looking for something to be the main storage device for you and your family’s devices it’s great and the fact it allows all the family to connect and also store files is also a great idea. For example, I tend to use this for work files but my girlfriend stores thousands of pictures it does both with ease. You will find if you used Dropbox on regular bases the My Cloud Home performs much better. The My Cloud Home is only good for those who value simplicity above all else and who want their data saved locally rather than online.
The My Cloud Home 8TB Single Drive costs £247.65 from Amazon
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