Hey all, just curious, how do you plan to use your My Cloud Home after June when the desktop app is no longer supported?
I know it will still work but it’s only a matter of time before further support is dropped so it’s best to move on I think.
Will any of you be shucking the hard drive out? If so, how would I go about setting up a personal home NAS using the hard drive and a PC?
I think that could be a good alternative. I’ve head some people recommend Tailscale but not sure how that works.
I saw a thread about installing Debian, is that something that’s possible on the latest My Cloud Home?
As for Local Network Access, before the outage, I had set it up, and because I was signed in to my Microsoft account on 2 different laptops, it had told me I can’t actually use the My Cloud Home on the 2nd laptop because of a Windows limitation. Has anyone else ran into this? It seems very poor.
Any tips, help or advice is appreciated thanks. Just want to get the most out of the device given it’s essentially being dropped by WD.
Have you opened a Support Case? If not opened, for more information, please contact the WD Technical Support team for the best assistance and troubleshooting: https://support-en.wd.com/app/ask
Any ideas? Im on same situation; for me mainly use was supposed to be a online backup from my laptop but after june it will only act as a under-cabinet brick
im planning to perform a factory reset and sell it
Thanks but this isn’t a case for support, more a case for end users as you’ll be stripping away desktop support and have offered little as way of workarounds.
I don’t know really. I was thinking of buying a QNAP or Synology, and then ripping out the hard drive from the my cloud home. Would have to back up first though.
I don’t know what to do in terms of cloud solutions, but can I rip out the internal drive and use it as a drive with an enclosure? how do I get around the access though the WD app or site?
There are videos online to show how to rip the drive out, it’s a bit tricky. Afterwards you can use the drive normally I think but you would have to format it first. So any data you have on your MyCloud you should backup first.
Talks of ripping out some drive seem to give satisfaction to a lot of MCH owners. But a little bit of forethought and light research on this MCH subforum with the search function will give you most of the answers. All you have to do is to download the debug_logs.tar from your MCH and read the smartctl log (hard disk log) and system log. It will tell you all the model and serial number and state of the hard drive. Then read about what happens when one tries to use a SMR drive in a NAS. The situation is worsened by the age of the SMR drive since the general lifetime of a HDD in constant service is about 2.5 years…
There is a very good reason why home users buy the MCH and that is because it is cheap storage. And the reason it is cheap is because of the lack of firmware functionality and the unreliability of the cheaper SMR hard drives in a NAS type operating system.
Thanks for the response. But ripping out the drive doesn’t necessarily mean using it for a NAS, just using it as a normal drive is possible too. Better that than having the thing end up as e-waste when WD drop support entirely.
That said, thanks for the heads up. If the My Cloud Home is considered a NAS-lite, then how come the drive inside would not be suitable for a regular NAS? Is it more a case of it would still work but isn’t recommended, or is it going to be a bad experience no matter what?
What alternatives are there for someone looking for a cheap NAS?
Most home users are not going to rip out the HDD because it will take too long and hurt their hands too much if they tried and most likely they would damage the case and the drive while trying. Just sell the MCH after a factory reset and buy a new backup drive. Sometimes people would pay stupid amounts for a used MCH on some online markets if the seller is patient.
There was a whole lawsuit and settlement against WD on this, with WDC paying about $17 for each 4 TB SMR drive sold as a NAS type storage. Too late to get the payout if you didn’t join earlier. The MCH usually worked fine and lasted more than the two year warranty if it was used in a ‘lite’ setting without media server and other sync jobs running all the time.
While selling the MCH would be a good solution, it seems difficult to see how you’d really get much value from selling it. Are people really in the market for a drive that has had desktop support dropped? It’s only a matter of time before WD decide they can’t be bothered with the mobile app too.
Your words have given me pause though as my intial plan was to simply rip the drive and put it in a new NAS, so I’m glad of the warning. Do all MCH’s have non NAS suitable drives or are some OK? I think I may end up buying a cheap QNAP.
After the security issues were resolved in late March, I was told by a tech that WD was working on a replacement of WD Discovery. However, in a subsequent communication with WD, I was now told that is not the case. I know a lot has been written on this bb regarding using other solutions. However, it is quite surprising that WD is not going to provide a replacement to WD Discovery, and in essence leaving the MCH without these basic capabilities (desktop sync, etc). I have looked at other synching options and none seem to have the simplicity of WD Discovery. There is also the cost of purchasing such a solution. I echo what the OP has asked. What are users going to do to replace WD Discovery?
Western Digital, an American company with a history older than Apple, is being merged and taken over by Kioxia (formerly Toshiba semiconductor). Kioxia does not have a presence in the retail business in the US and much of the world and it is not known if Kioxia will pursue retail as it is not a source of most of its revenue.
