Copying files from external harddrive to My Cloud Mirror and remote acces in Windows Explorer

WD Legacy Products My Cloud OS 3
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Hello, I just got the My Cloud Mirror and I have two seperate Questions to which I could not find an answer anywhere so far:

  1. When trying to copy files from an external harddrive that is connected to the My Cloud Mirror (lets call it A:) over USB 3.0 (the external harddrive (B:) is USB 3.0 aswell) I get extremely low speeds when trying to do it over one of the connected systems (~5 mb/s). This makes sense since the router is 100 mbit and all the data has to be transfered from B: to my computer and then back to A:. Now I was trying to copy it using the MyCloud Desktop App, assuming the My Cloud Mirror would do the Job completely on its own without first copying the files to the Windows system. I tried it but the My Cloud App does not give me any speed/time remaining and the job seems to stop when I close the software. Is there any way to issue commands like that to the MyCloud Mirror so it works on its own?

  2. I am trying to set up remote access to my data on the MyCloud Mirror using the Windows Explorer. I alread got it working using the My Cloud App (I enter my Email + PW for the user and I can use it with the App). The thing is I would rather use the windows explorer since functionality of the App is rather limited. Is this possible?

Thank you in advance for any help!

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  1. If you connect to the drive dashboard (you can do this via the quickview app, or just open your web browser of choice and point it at the IP address assigned to the Mirror by your router) and log-in, then you can do the copy internally without having to slow things down by using any network or external resources.

Once logged in, go to the backup tab across the top, and then the USB backups one in the left hand side sub-menu (it’s the top option, so will probably already be open). There you can create a job which copies a folder from USB (the connected HDD) to the NAS (the Mirror) or vice-versa. It’s not very powerful in that it can only copy folders at a time, but with a bit of preparation it works fine for bulk populating or backing up one from the other.

There have been reports from some users here of problems with doing that, but personally I have used it a few times to initially set up the Mirror from an existing drive and to populate a new MyPassport drive, and for me it’s always worked fine.

For more details and a walk-through, see the Mirror User Manual, section 7 (page 71 to page 74).

  1. There is no way to do this unless your computer and the Mirror are on the same network (in which case your Mirror should appear under the Network section in explorer and you can manipulate it like any other networked drive). Being able to do such remote access is a feature that has already been requested (see here) but is currently open for voting. I suspect your desire is for the remote case?
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Thanks a lot for your reply!

  1. That is good, I will try it as soon as I come home. Thinking about getting a 1000 mbit switch (can’t replace the router because ISP does not allow it) because working with the 10 mb/s speed is quite painful. Especially when first setting up the system but at least I now can try to copy from external drive to the MyCloud faster.

  2. That is quite unfortunate. I was hoping there was some system in place that works similar to dropbox, where a background program runs (which does the password checking and finds out what the current IP of the drive is) and it integrates with the windows explorer. The mycloud desktop app seems ok if you want to access one file but for watching pictures or small videos in succession seems quite a pain.

Thanks anyway, have to think if the device even makes sense for me now, I was really excited about it :-/

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The manual you reference seems to indicate you can backup to a cloud drive like S3.  I have a single drive MyCloud from about a year ago and there is no backup tab on my UI.  Does only the mirror have the option to cloud backup?  Does a later model single drive MyCloud offer that feature?

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Yes, the Mirror has some options for cloud back-up as indicated in the manual. Offhand I think there are a couple of different options for destinations, but I can’t say how good they may or may not be as I haven’t used that feature on my NAS.

As to whether the single drive MyCloud has anything similar, I’d suggest either looking at the relevant manual from the WD website or posting a question to ask in the relevant section of this forum. It may also be worth checking if your firmware on your MyCloud is up to date in case it’s software functionality that may have been added.