Difference between personal cloud and NAS

I was under the impression that ‘Personal Cloud’ was just a marketing term for ‘Network Attached Storage’, but WD have a separate category for NAS devices, so I was wondering if there actually is a difference?

Thanks,
Gerald

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The single bay My Cloud IS a network attached storage device that also has remote access capability (i.e., the personal cloud marketing language) and has an embedded media server (Twonky). The more expensive multi bay My Cloud units have a different feature set (ability to add third party apps/modules), multiple hard drives, larger potential capacity, and typically more capable hardware. They also have remote access capability similar to the single bay My Cloud units.

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Thanks for the reply Bennor. So they are NAS devices, just with smaller feature sets for the lighter user?

Out of interest, what are these third party apps/modules that you can get on the multi bay units and why would someone want them?

All I want to do is store all of my files in one place, so that I can access any of them, at any time, from anywhere on any of my 4 devices.

Thanks,
Gerald

Here is an example of the official third party apps that some (or all) of the more expensive multi bay My Cloud units support: http://setup.wd2go.com/?mod=faqs&device=mcm&faq=thirdParty

Unofficially, those who have the newer version single bay My Cloud that runs the v2.x firmware, can use SSH to modify the firmware to allow for the installation of certain third party apps.

https://community.wd.com/t/wd-mycloud-gen2-enable-apps-install-tab-apps/177885

You can find out more of what the NAS devices above the basic My Cloud devices can do by checking www.wdc.com (NOT under personal cloud storage) but rather under Network attached storage at All Network Attached Storage: Shop NAS Enclosures & Drives | Western Digital

The higher end devices can accept certain apps for example, virus scanning, and lots of people want to add Plex (which requires added memory card for best results) for the Pro series of top-end NAS devices.

I happen to have a DL Series high-end NAS that can install and run Plex without problems, but apparently since the newer Pro models have been released, the DL Series is not marketed anymore (just within the past month) and is replaced by the Pro Series.

@Gerald_Stevens Have you done a Google search for Personal Cloud? Here is a link to one search result.

Thanks all for your replies.

As I had originally assumed, “personal cloud” is just a marketing term for NAS.

These “personal cloud” devices are much more simplified and deal with only the basic features that a home user would need, but they are still technically NAS devices.

I just wanted to clarify that. Thanks.

Thanks,
Gerald

Yep, Gerald, you “got it”. I do want to point out that many home users bypass getting the basic My Cloud and purchase a higher-tiered NAS. At the time I got my WD DL 2100 w/two 4TB drives set up in a RAID1 array it was tthe op of line NAS, although there were some which came with 4 drive bays, not only two., but they cost more yet.

Why did I get this model? I needed the storage room; I store all my terabytes of media files on it (with lots of room to spare for new data), and it can serve the files to many devices in my home and accessed remotely. My media consists of lots of iTunes music files, video files and the photos and videos from my iPhones and iPads.

Being that it a RAID1 configuration, each drive is a duplicate of the other, so if one drive fails, the other can still be operational, so if/when a drive fails, all I need to do is replace it, and the good drive repopulates the new drive so I always have a backup thanks to RAID1.