The irony of that statement is that ’ Chromebooks don’t have integrated support for browsing Windows file shares (known as SMB or CIFS shares), or NFS shares from other operating systems.’
Google would rather every user buy their cloud subscription and use their online hardware and give up whatever useful information their users carry… and so would MSFT and AAPL.
Once upon a time Google did write a set of SMB protocol for the Android and WDC stupidly thought that that could be the basis for a HOME storage hardware called the My Cloud Home, but Google soon saw the errors of what they were doing and WDC found out the hard way a few years after that.
That is something you would not want to do. Synology will generally not approve low end SMR drives such as the WD40EFAX series in the MCH as HDDs that are compatible with their NAS - read their forum and search this subforum as well. Synology considered them as light duty and not what one would use for NAS.
Hi, I was wondering on the back of your previous post you may be able to help me.
I have successfully setup Local Access to MCH Duo for my Desktop.
I now want to set up a second/Laptop Windows PC to access the MCH device. When I try to access it within Windows Explorer > Network, it requests a Local Network Access User Name and Password. When I use the same Local User Name I used for the Desktop, an error message appears concerning permission. It states that ‘Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not allowed’
Hahahaha. Oh. . . .the topic of WD HDD’s. . .now that is a can of worms!
Are you sure they are using “Red” drives and not “Red Plus”? I can’t verify . . .because WD is down (hahaha). Frankly; I would not consider ANY SMR drive (like the WD Red) as fit for ANY purpose. The Red Plus (which are all CMR drives) would be the entry point in my mind.
I tend to agree - - → if the drive in the MCH is a “red” and not a “red plus”; I would not transplant it.
Honestly - - - I am not familiar enough with the limitations of the MCH.
It would not surprise me if the deliberately put in some restrictions on connections.
I do know that with other WD products (OS3/OS5); accessing a share from multiple users; or the same user with muliple devices would be no problem.
Well. . . the MCH is quite limiting. Definitely a flawed implementation.
Yes.
Networking is quite painful.
Too many people trying to “make it easy”; and you end up with a mish-mash.
I went through this with music streaming last year. Aside from using a stupid spotify playlist (which plays the music IT wants to play); it is quite hard to figure out all the right bits-and-bobs to make the #*&$&ing things work. I ended up basically dedicating a PC as a music server; with tunes on a USB running Windows Media Player.
Oh Liberty:-)
So how’s that any different to what Microsoft or Apple does?..exceptions being that unlike Microsoft, you don’t have to get an online education on like 20 different chat forums on how to connect remote devices with Android and unlike iOs , you don’t have to have been born and raised everything Apple, in order to do menial work such as hooking onto a remote device:-)
Not all cloud services are equal opportunity disadvantageous.
Google Drive plus Google Docs that pretty much allow for the seamless conversion of any popular MS or iOS file formats and accessible from pretty much any platform, being Windows ,iOs or mobile devices, together with its seamless integration and incredibly fast speeds, is in my view (and after reading all the comments here regarding NAS drives and the immense complexities involved with them to just be able to access files), the BEST solution to data access on the go.
Sure, if you want an entirely secure network, then don’t use the internet, period. One can then go about in full geek mode and implement their own private networks and install the nerdiest NAS devices within that network and be happy that their data is secure and accessible…from within their own bubble. But when it comes to having universal access from any platform and from any location on the planet, Google Drive and Google services that come free of charge like Gmail and Google Docs, cannot be beaten by anyone and by far, a fact that I happily wager on.
So how is that any different to not having access to your network from outside of your network? And with 100TB of data which is the equivalent of a few copies of the Library of the Congress, you would want to have backups more than just on the cloud, anyway.
Agreed, with the exception of not being able to access your stuff from outside of your network, unless you use the internet, which brings us 360 degrees back to why not just use a hyper secure cloud service like Google Drive, instead of going through the hassle (and expense) of setting up your own NAS drives.
Case in point. Pricing for a 20TB storage (I have never even heard of any single private entity ever needing more than 20TB of storage, unless you run a commercial server, in which case you would have your own enterprise network running on one of the few major backbones like Google or Amazon)) is under $100 a month.
Google employs something like 1543 engineers who’s sole job is to keep their google drive service running secure and flawless, so you can keep more important things on your mind than your storage requirements.
If you are using your own VPN, then you are using the internet, so how is that any different to a regular cloud service, when your remote connection gets cut? Its the same thing. You won’t have access to your drive and data from outside of your network. And your data is not any more secure than Google’s, when you use the internet…and you are downloading your data at a fraction of the speeds from outside of your network, than a cloud service like google is capable of providing…It seems to me that it is monumentally more “disadvantageous” to go through the hassle of maintaining a VPN and NAS drives,
Well, you should have said that to begin with. Yes I agree, if local access is the primary use, then it only makes sense to store locally but for someone like me who is on the go all the time, “access” is my primary use and I need this access to be :
1-Fast
It doesn’t matter how great your NAS setup is, if your internet upload speed is limited, then you are not getting the speeds that you need from your private VPN when you access your drives from the outside of your network.
Hard to get fast connection given that the price point for ISP connections jump significantly when you want to upgrade your connection for a faster upload than 50 Mbps. (I have download speeds of 1.5 Gps but my upload is limited to only 50Mbps and that is considered fast by the general standards of only 30Mbps for most other providers. In my area in the North East, prices jump from under $100 a month to over $250 a month. So the connection price difference alone, justifies $9.95 a month for 2TB of cloud storage with Google , considering all the other services that come with it , such as Google Docs and GMail.
2-Security:
For the life of me I can’t imagine anyone being able to secure their VPN connection, better than a reputable cloud provider, like Google
3-Cost:
See #1
So yes, it all depends on how you want to access your data. I hope we both agree on this point because it brings us back to this silly WD solutions and their NAS hardware which promise a seamless Cloud service with the hardware residing at your home and how it does not work too well and how we now have no clue what has happened with this breach and who on the planet is running around with copies of our data.
Its a matter of perspective. Why on earth would you think that everyone who is a roadwarrior needs access to data just to stream movies:-) I have to work on shared documents that contain text, images and videos which are in excess of 10 Gigs, almost constantly while I am on the road. I hardly have time to watch movies and if I do, I just use mine or the hotel’s TV and movie services.
In such cases as mine (millions are in the same boat worldwide), it would be stupid to rely on a private network with crawling speeds.
I disagree.
On the face of it, it is actually a great solution for people just like yourself, believe it or not:-)
It offers the security of a VPN by keeping your data at home, on your bedside or wherever else that makes you feel cozy and secure, while it takes away the hastle of implementing and maintaining a NAS network and IF you are willing to pay the price to upgrade your internet connection to high upload speeds, then it is practically like using a great NAS system, without the hassle and constant maintenance…Except that the company behind it (WD) doesn’t learn from past mistakes (yes, it is their second massive breach in less than 2 years) and can’t seem to understand systems security or they simply don’t take it seriously.
Let’s hope they will learn their lesson this time, because I am not even sure if there will ever even be a next time for WD, after this shenanigans .
Given that WD has not released a single word regarding how this breach has happened and knowing that this breach is not limited to the MCH hardware and in fact it is a breach that has affected their entire enterprise and NAS services across the board, we do not know if their MCH “remote access authentication” was in fact the point of entry or not.
For all you and I know, their RAA was not breached at all and if it was, so what? It doesn’t mean the technology is a “disaster” but rather their implementation and maintenance of it that failed, but we are not even close to making those judgment calls yet.
Btw everyone uses some variation of remote access authentication for remote access.
For arguments sake; I will posit that GoogleDrive; Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox are functionally equivalent. I have played with them all. . .and use OneDrive professionally. All these apps have good functionality. . . .and have the same inherent flaws. These flaws include
Security - - - they have massive security. Until they don’t
Privacy - - - - Your data is your own. Until it isn’t. You are protected by Privacy policy and Terms of Service - - → Both of which can change on a moments notice. Or retroactively.
Payment - - → If you miss a monthly payment due to a credit card glitch: What happens to your data?
One great advantage to these services is that they are
generally easy and
Provide fairly seamless integration across machines. If your laptop dies in Texas; you can buy a replacement in California; log in; and all your data appears.
Easy file sharing
A personal NAS has the primary advantage of being IN YOUR HOUSE. Much harder for someone to hack it if you turn it off. Don’t have to worry about monthly payments or change in policy.
The disadvantage, of course, is two fold;
Often user hostile. Buy a NAS; and you will start to learn ALOT about networking right quick.
There is significant differences between vendors
MCH and WD OS/5 work VERY differently; and have different capabilities. Synology and Qnap products also are distinct and different. The MCH is by far the worst; and the only one that generally REQUIRES internet access to function. And the support level for MCH is on full display this month. It’s not a good look.
It’s in your house. One fire or flood away from total data loss.
There are tradeoffs with all options.
My own solution: NAS is a Home Network backup device. I have a copy (few months old) offsite. I carry data with me on smaller drives. My solution is not perfect; but it suits me.
I don’t really understand why people keep talking about MCH being the culprit here, when it fact ALL WD NAS products have been shut down, including and not limited to MCH Duo, WD OS/5 and everything else in between.
Whilst a NAS setup is a prefered solution for a home network setup, the most critical flaw of a home NAS is the fact that regardless of the level of its sophistication and complexity, once people start to use it for “remote access, retrieval and storage”, it becomes the WORST cloud system around, in terms of security, speed, performance and cost, yes upfront costs of a home NAS can be huge depending on how deep individual nerdiness can go:-)
BTW, what I love about Google drive is that unlike what is offered by others like MS OneDrive and the Korean made DropBox (with servers located in South Korea), is the capability of simultaneous collaboration and editing of files by several participants at a time, something that requires a lot of fiddling about with operating systems and software, in order to achieve with a home NAS setup in a remote access scenario and even then it would be way too slow for it to work smoothly, due to speed limitations imposed by ISPs, which we have discussed in length in this thread, already.
Well, yes but local access isn’t my case in point here
I disagree simply because human intervention should not play a part in security. As such (and as you stated) the level of proficiency in a typical NAS setup can seriously impact its security. One can’t even begin to compare what goes into a cloud provider’s security apparatus with a home NAS setup, regardless, which explains why a cloud provider like Google and its massive pool of users worldwide, has never been hacked, but you may also have a valid point , but only because individuals hardly ever get targeted for hacking because of the relatively low potential for monetary gain, however we hear every day that small and medium sized businesses with their own secure networks, become victims of hacking and ransom wear, especially businesses that hire smaller and relatively unknown third parties for their IT solutions.
This explains why Google has been expanding its commercial size, almost exponentially in the past few years. Their security apparatus is simply unparalleled because of their vast resources, something than no small IT organization or individual can provide.
As an example, in 2015 there was hardly any school district across the US that used Gmail for their internal emails.
Today more than 35% of schools across the country, use Gmail and out of thouse, 80% use Gmail, exclusively. That is an impressive level of market penetration, something that has traditionally been a Microsoft domain.
Apparently, according to the WD manual for the MCH (not Duo), it isn’t even user serviceable, so the HDD can’t be replaced/removed. My hammer may disagree and if it can’t be removed, damage uncured will result in it in the bin where it belongs
Alright, I’ll bite.
So if that is in fact true and American children have now been taken wholesale hostage to brainwashing by the fringe left of the politics, then that no one’s fault but the moderates and the conservative base of the politics for allowing it to happen, which is one reason why the GOP’s nose keeps getting b loo died in every election (remember the “Red Wave” that never came?)
Anyway as an independent who gets to decide who’s at the wheel, I personally wish we could take the fringe of both parties out to sea…and come back without them because leaving the fate of the country to the “freedom caucus” and the “Squad”, can only yield one outcome and that is no country at all.
Well, let’s put it this way, at least they are getting what they need for free, instead of paying a Wokester like Bill Gates for stuff that don’t work, which is the equivalent of paying the same people who indoctrinate your kids🤣
Between Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee selling kids books on Fox that tell children how “God put Trump in office”, on Fox and Ocasio Cortez who just announced she wants to sue a member of the Supreme Court for taking a vacation, we have some totally insane people in positions of power, which means the right to safe and fast data access may in fact have become a 28th amendment right already😂
Have a nice day.
We are going around circles here, so let’s put this to bed:
1-I have no problem with home networks (yes you can ultimately switch it off and no one can hack a network that is not in operation)
Home networks and NAS drives are not my issue. I already have mine too and am quite happy with it.
2-My issue is having access to my data when I’m away from my home network.
3-You can’t expect everyone to have in depth knowledge of networking. In fact 99% of people don’t give a flying fart about the technology. All they want is access to their data, safely and securely, at reasonably high speeds. (I can’t wait 30 second for a file to page while I’m away from my network).
4-If you can come up with a home network that can be accessed from the outside, safely and securely at reasonable speeds with the current available technology, then knock yourself out and market it because it will sell like hot Cake. Heck I’d be your first customer:-)
Google Drive:
Google offers the most productive cloud solutions that I can think of.
Google Photos sync your videos and images from a multiple of devices and automatically gets rid of duplicates if you so wish it to do, while Google drive safely mirrors any number of folders that you want, from any number of devices…all on the go and with minimal to no intervention.
Security:
Google encrypts files at server level after stacking them in several locations (all files are broken up, so that chunks of it would be useless to hackers). You can also opt to encrypt your files at your end, so you end up with an end to end encryption which means even if your data is hacked at its most vulnerable state (during transit, while google does a 256 bit encryption ) , they would be useless to hackers.
Speed:
All that happens at incredible upload/download speeds to a point that the user can’t even tell the difference between opening files directly from their local or Google drive.
In closing (and again) if you can offer a similar architecture and performance for a home cloud setup then why don’t you commercialize it and make millions $$ , heck $billions$$, because the vast majority of people just want a SIMPLE way of backing their stuff up from anywhere and any time and without them even having to think about it.
It boils down to: If you need internet access; a “cloud” makes sense. If you just need home access; the home NAS makes sense.
I am personally a bit enmeshed in all worlds (work in cloud; home on NAS; small drives for personal data when travelling).
Regarding OS/5 and the current troubles: I didn’t even KNOW WD was down; because my own NAS units have been off the net for over a year.
Regarding the cost/performance of net access to my NAS: It’s a cost/performance tradeoff. I know I can get the performance if I pay the cost (for high speed network access). TBH: For simple file transfer; cheap is was actually fine. Where I found you need high speed is actually for movie streaming.
Regarding Cloud Services: They all have their advantages/disadvantages - → Just like the NAS boxes.
As for the politics: I will stay out of it in this forum
What “position”
You are basically in a cloud forum (WD cloud services are down) discussing the merits of isolated home networking, a totally different subject:-)
That’s not what you transpire. You have accused people of being “lazy”, “dumb” and “newbies” , just because not everyone is verse with networking setups, yet you also claim that you “expect nothing”.
Its the same thing. You won’t have access to your drive and data from outside of your network. And your data is not any more secure than Google’s, when you use the internet…and you are downloading your data at a fraction of the speeds from outside of your network, than a cloud service like google is capable of providing…It seems to me that it is monumentally more “disadvantageous” to go through the hassle of maintaining a VPN and NAS drives, 
