Frequent disconnecting/reconnecting, what's the best way?

Hi,

Sorry if this is an annoyingly ignorant topic…

A little background.  My wife bought a My Cloud (2TB).  Originally we were just going to get a regular extrenal hard drive, and I probably wouldn’t have opted for this fancy thing if I was doing the comparison shopping, but now that we have it, I’m kind of looking forward to using its capabilites.  However, we have a logistical problem: power.

Our apartment is very old and there are no power outlets in the hallway.  Our router is in the hallway but the landlord specially drilled a hole through thick concrete walls (into the garage) so the router could be connected to power and the phone company’s box.  Obviously, we didn’t realize that this device has to remain connected to the router.

Some reading this might be thinking: “ever heard of an extension cord?”  Yes, indeed, I have.  But this solution isn’t attractive because the two nearest outlets would mean a) having a clunky wire in front of the door to the most high traffic room in the house (and we have 3 small kids), or b) not being able to close the bathroom door.

This brings me (finally) to my question:  Is it bad to frequently connect/reconnect the device? I’m thinking I can just use it as a normal external hard drive, and then when we leave for any significant duration, connect it to the router to take advantage of the “cloud” capabilities.  Unfortunately, there’s no “safely eject device” or even power button with this.  So that’s why I’m wondering if I’m going to risk damaging the data if I do this too much.

Advice would be appreciated!

Thanks,

-Paul

p.s. I also tried connecting the device directly to my iMac with the ethernet cord.  This worked in one way, but then if I don’t want to leave my computer on all the time (which I don’t) I can’t access the cloud with mobile devices anyway, so there isn’t much point to that either.

if you go into the UI power it down from the utilities menu it will not hurt it. personally I would find another solution.

Is the hole big enough for a 2nd wire? either the mycloud power or an ethernet cable

Are all you devices connected wirelessly to the router? if not install an ethernet switch by one of the devices and place the mycloud there.

move the router and the mycloud to the garage, this will lower the signal some but will probably be ok

To safely shutdown your WD My Cloud use the Shutdown button provided in the Dashboard. See image below. You can unplug it after all the lights are off.

When you are ready to use it again plug it back in and wait for the blue light on the front.

Posted by,
cat0w (USA)

Thank you both. I appreciate the replies.

I *might* be able to squeeze another wire through the hole.  I was going to try that.  I’m not sure if the power cord will be long enough though.

We originally tried putting the router in the garage, but the signal wasn’t good enough.  It’s a tall townhouse made of very thick concrete, so the top and bottom levels weren’t getting a good signal, and since we’re paying a pretty hefty price for the good package, our landlord was kind enough to drill the hole so we could bring the router in.  That solved that problem.

In any event it’s good to know how to properly shut the machine down!  The printed instructions were shockingly basic.  I mean I get the appeal of clean, quick start-up guide, but usually a more detailed instruction manual is included too.  I guess in this day and age, google, and this forum take care of that need. :wink:

Thanks again.  I’m likely to have more questions once I actually get using this gadget, so I’ll probably be back. :slight_smile:

-paul