My business rips individual’s personal CD collections. We do 25000 cds a month and i deal with 25-30 customers a month, 75% of which have me buy a NAS.
I am used to the WD My Cloud and used to buy about 25 a month on average. I am loading over 1000 cds of data on average into specific folders I set up (for lossless playback and a 2nd folder for mp3 playback). I am used to building the share folders, setting permissions for media serving and configuring the NAS. The idea is that the content is loaded to the NAS and I send the NAS back ‘ReadyToPlay’ to the ultimate end user.
I am now faced with now using the ‘easier’ My Cloud Home. I bought several and can’t understand how to do some basic things which I need help on:
I’d like to be able to configure it on BEHALF of a customer including loading their digital music content and setting up the access share folders. I don’t want to create their passwords or views or anything else on their behalf (I used to just set user and password permissions with basic User and password access). Now I can’t understand how to build separate share folders, how to set up permissions so this can be ‘plug and play’ for them.
it appears i have to set up all details and interfaces and then send them instructions how to access it? I don’t want to load their email address or any other aspect of access, as I said I’m not the ultimate end user, so i don’t know that information.
I can’t find out how to copy and paste 350GB of files from one of our PCs over the network to a folder i create on the My Cloud Home. I can’t for the life of me find out how to see a folder or copy files (upload) to it. How do I create multiple music folders and then how do I add content?
This product seems like it is so ‘easy’ that it works for people installing it themselves but I can’t do it on behalf of someone else. Is there a way to switch modes and go back to classic ‘My Cloud’ interfaces for folder setup, updating of firmware, access rights?
This is a nightmare for someone in the integration or service business who needs to perform work for another party who is the ultimate user.
I’d be happy to discuss further via phone, please email me and i’ll send my number privately. I’d LOVE to speak with a product manager to understand how this new NAS will be marketed to a channel that integrates it into their solutions for end users.
if you can point me to articles on how to do the above questions, i’ll go buy another unit and take a crack at it. I NEED to find a single drive NAS solution and your’s is the only game in town at a decent price point…
thank you
Jeff Tedesco
ReadyToPlay Inc.
The My Cloud home is not a traditional NAS and it does not use traditional SMB shares like the older My Cloud devices. The my Cloud Home uses a private user space and the only way to log into the private user space is by installing a software called WD discovery and logging int he the account. Once that is done it will mount the private user space as a drive on the computer. It is important to note that not all devise can see or access data in the private user space so depending on what media device you are using it may or may not be able to access the files stored in the private user space.
For music Sonos has a better service that can be enabled to access data in the private user space. Other than that PLEX can be used for media.
There is also a default public SMB share that may be able to be used but there are no settings that can be changed for this share. No passwords etc it is a public share and that cannot be changed.
I understand your wanting to tell me that i should have researched it more. And I did so after the post. Here is what I learned and I’d love to hear your feedback:
I knew that the ‘new’ My Cloud is not a traditional NAS. Given the market for one drive NAS solutions, there are few if any. I can build a 3TB Synology but it is beyond the price point for me to make much money on it.
I can’t imagine that WD would kill off a ‘traditional NAS’ entirely when the market is theirs. I must not have sales data on single drive nas’s, but if you look up alternatives there are few if any. It was theirs and they abandoned the market.
I realized the private user space is a pain to load and a pain for my customers to access the digital music files.
I HOPE that I can use the default public share, create folders for Mp3 and Lossless, and then load the files to that.
It is amazing that this isn’t a need being voiced by users of WD NAS’s to say, why not offer EITHER configuration. In my mind, some product manager convinced a whole division to swing towards ‘ease of use’ for a NAS and ignored many other functional uses of a home NAS.
but anyway, i did understand the issue, did research alternatives and am sorry they can’t do what all my customers have been wanting…
thanks Jeff
Hey thanks for the info. You confirmed what I thought. You seem to understand this product’s positioning. [BTW: I replied to another message below about abandoning the market for single drive, utility NAS’s - let me know what you think.]
Question 1: You say Sonos has a better service that can be enabled to access data in the private user space. Is it a download they have to put on the NAS or in their sonos app? I’ve looked all over the sonos website and have found nothing about this beta…
Question 2: As for the public share. I’m hoping I can create separate folders for content (ie. Mp3 folder for those kind of files and a "Lossless’ folder for music to be accessed by Sonos). Then i’d like to be able to load the files to those folders and send the NAS to the end user. They would then direct sonos to look into the public share albeit without passwords but at least readable.
In researching it, the public share folder IS accessible by sonos with no restrictions on format, cover art showing up or issues involving a workaround or driver in ‘beta’ - all things to get to data in the private share.
I’m hoping there is no restriction to the number of folders or the amount of data (up to drive capacity) that i can put into the public share. True?
Is that what you would do? Should i abandon the Cloud Home and start building one drive NAS’s from Synology? I’d buy their basic chassis and then a 3TB drive. Then I would have what i want originally but the price point goes up by $100 or more…
Also most of my customer’s don’t want to involve another level of ‘search’ and avoid Plex as an interface. They are putting Sonos in with other media and want a NAS to simply serve files, nothing more.
as mentioned, your advice and candor is greatly appreciated and I hope I can offer you advice in the future. thanks for your help
Jeff
The single bay My Cloud units which are different than the My Cloud Home units are the general subject of this subforum. The My Cloud and My Cloud Home are not intended or marketed to business users. These devices are strictly for a home consumer or small home office user.
There is a reason why business class NAS devices cost more. People assume they can buy an entry level My Cloud or My Cloud Home for their business because one is looking at cost of the unit compared to the more expensive business class NAS devices.
There are a number of NAS providers out there. Qnap, Synology, Buffalo, WD, etc. If one is shopping only on cost then WD looks like the best. But low cost comes at a price of features and hardware.
In a business environment where one is storing customer data at a minimum one should be using a multi bay NAS device. One that has RAID drive mirroring (reason for multi bay) and the ability to backup that customer data to another device.
I think you misunderstand what his business is for Bennor.
this guy offers a service where a customer drops off a huge stack of vintage 1990s audio CDs, and he format shifts them into MP3s, and then places them on either a removable storage device, or on a consumer grade NAS, intended for use inside a home.
He is a middle man, doing sales of home grade NAS hardware, to home users, who preloads and preconfigures the NAS hardware with the customer’s music collection, so that it is painlessly simple for the customer to use their music collection via DLNA and pals.
He is interested in having a low cost consumer product, as a home consumer has no need of business class hardware, and certainly does not want to pay the price of business class hardware.
He himself is not warehousing the customer’s data. He is just a middleman doing format shifting for home consumers.
It is a service added in the Sonos app. The Beta is only available for a few countries right now. See the article on WD support site below for more info.
I do not have a sonos but as far as I know there would be no restrictions. The default public share is just a public SMB share.
Yes I think I did based on this statement in the OP; “The idea is that the content is loaded to the NAS and I send the NAS back ‘ReadyToPlay’ to the ultimate end user.”
None of that matters as the single bay My Cloud units have apparently been pulled from many if not all retailer shelves (or was pulled by WD from the distribution chain). That leaves the My Cloud Home which isn’t really an NAS in the traditional sense and worse has its own set of issues and many complaints. There is the Seagate Central Personal Cloud Home Media Storage device that may (or may not) be better feature wise (and cost wise) than the My Cloud Home.
That’s the reason I pointed out that there are other options, like the Buffalo single bay unit, which are still in the sub 200$ price point, even if it is inferior to the mycloud gen2.
WD has sold a product that I dont even know what its intended use case is, with the MyCloud Home. I certainly wont be buying one any time soon.
