My Cloud vs NAS

WD External Drives External Drives
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I have had bad experiences with 2 QNAP NAS’ (QNAP now out for hardware replacement). I am not tech-savvy and used it mostly for storing uncompressed music/photo/video media, (for streaming to my home theater) and documents, and for having external access to them. Currently use WD My Books for back-up. Trying to dumb everything down - Am considering purchasing 2 My Cloud duo units - 1 as an external hard drive to only store documents and connect direct to my PC (wireless to home router); the other to store the multi-media and connect directly to my home theater AV unit via hardwired connection to my home router / IP modem. Other than cost are there any drawbacks? Can PLEX run on My Cloud? Other suggestions?

Thanks

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Things you need to know:
The basic My Cloud you are familiar with from the past few years is history; its line of entry-level My Cloud products was discontinued end of 2017, and WD’s NEW entry-level line of cloud products is called My Cloud Home. Unlike the earlier My Clouds that were actually NAS devices, the Home is not a NAS; it is a network attached DRIVE(s). When the Home first appeared, a lot of people misunderstood this distinction and thought it was an upgrade of the My Cloud, and fussed a lot about this in the Home forum.

A Home may fit your needs, but if you want a NAS, you need to look in the Network Attached Storage (NAS) line of products where you will find the PR and EX series of WD’s only NAS products.

As you look in the Product section you will see Personal Cloud (storage), and some of the older My Clouds are listed. These are all closeout and refurbished units, and I would steer clear of them, and only focus on the Home in that section, or the NAS section PR and EX products.

As for PLEX, only the Home has it built in, and it can easily be added to the NAS products. I have an upper tier WD NAS unit I use to store and serve up my media files. I have added PLEX to it. I do not use Plex to watch any movies and only use it along with the Amazon Alexa to play from Plex to listen to my music sometimes, and prefer other apps for movie and music playing otherwise. Plex, (other than in combo with Alexa) is not my preferred way to access my media to play via my home entertainment system; i.e.on stereo and TV

Let me know if you have any questions.

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Mike

Thanks for the heads-up. I was wondering why Amazon did not have the My Cloud in stock. However, the reviews on the ‘Home’ unti are very disappointing also. Not sure which way to go at the moment, possibly back to an NAS and hope for better luck (Both QNAP’s I owned had hardware failures). How reliable has your WD NAS been? Your preferred way to access media via your home entertainmemnt system? ANy advice is much appreciated.

Thanks again

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I have a WDTV media player. It was very popular and it works great for watching my movie collection which are mostly on ISO files. It is just like watching the DVD on TV. Unfortunately WD made a bad decision not to continue them a few years ago and teamed up with Plex, but unlike the WDTV, which plays most any media format thrown at it, Plex is rather limited in what it will play. It does play mp4 videos, and I have plenty for the iOS iPhones/iPads, but my files for them are optimized for small screens; not for TV size screens.

For playing on mobile devices the movies do fine with the WD My Cloud app. Music is not best on the app. For that I have a few apps I like much better.

I have other apps for TV, and an Amazon Fire TV. When I needed a new WDTV for another room and new ones were not around anymore, I put the Fire TV stick into service. I use an Amazon app called MrMC (which is a derivative of Kodi media player app), but more user-friendly, to play movies from NAS because MrMC plays all media types (including ISO). Suffice to say I have plenty of apps for music and movies from my NAS for TV, stereo, and mobile devices.

I have had my WD DL2100,2-bay NAS for over four years with no problems, Before that ,I played movies and music from HDs connected to the WDTV, and still do

I did mention earlier that I like playing music using Alexa and Plex which work together to enable me to request Plex to play music via voice commands. Very coo, for example I can say Alexa, ask Plex to play music, and a continuous stream of tracks from my music on my NAS are selected by Plex to play to an Amazon D0t which is connected to the stereo audio imput, so sound is terrific. My NAS was top of the line a few years ago to unseat it until the PR series was released.

So, how have you played your music and movies from your NAS?

I find reviews at Amazon of limited value When I see reviews of my products I like, good reviews come from people who know what they are talking about,and terrible reviews come from people who have no clue of what they are talking about, because they don’t understand how it works, never read the manual, or are basically 99% clueless.

The Home nay be a good entry-level product, but I would not know. If you want a NAS your choices are either the EX series or PR series of WD.
Compare the bells and whistles of each.

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Sounds like you have been at this for awhile I originally purchased the QNAP (6 bay-24 TB capacity, Raid 6) to download about 3000 CD’s (FLAC and mp3), 1000+ DVD’s and a few hundred Blurays. I previously had an HP Homeserver which ran well for about 10 years (other than a drive failure here and there), then they stopped supporting it and it became archaic. Only used it to listen to music and look at photos, no movies.

I use dB poweramp software to rip and playback, and the QNAP also had an app. Have not gotten to download any movies yet.

I use Roku devices on all my TV’s in lieu of the cable TV boxes, and also own an iPhone, iPad and an Alexa and a Dot; using Amazon prime music and iTunes. Will try the Dot in the stereo audio - thanks. In the process of upgrading my AV Pre-amp which may have an App for watching the movies whether on an NAS or HDD. Will look into MrMC also - thanks.

I read a lot of reviews before I purchase anything and you are correct, the folks who review on Amazon are usually knuckleheads, but it makes me dig deeper into other sites. Like I said, I am not very tech-savvy (born to late I guess). Thanks for all your feedback - lots to think about.

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Yep, been at it a while. When 21 in mid 60’s, I enlisted in USAF and got great training as an electronic tech and stayed in over six years, when I got serious about my college degree and took advantage of GI Bill. Got degree in Business/Marketing and worked in marketing for a book publisher for 30 years until my vision got so bad, could not drive like I used to. and been retired for over 12 years, so have lots of time to tinker with today’s electronic gadgets. Probably bought the first Roku when it came out and have a couple running today. Have the Fire TV, Chromecast, too, but the WDTV is the family work horse for movie viewing. All these gadgets are different enough so that each has some advantage over the other. We still keep cable TV; too attached to some programs like live baseball, football, 60 Minutes, and wife has her favorite sitcoms. The best thing about cable other than the programming is today, it is portable, because we can also watch most programs via our iPads at home or when we travel; like when in Hawaii this past fall we watched the Seahawks live on the Pads via Xfinity cable stream, I even have a streaming documentary service called Curiosity Stream which I watch often…

But, I digress. Let’s get you a new NAS. You are too modest; of course you are tech savvy!. Your had more NAS than I have, so I would say you need one of the 4-bay PR 4100 models. Although you said the QNAP is out for repair, so stay with it if it is serviceable again. Actually, some very savvy guys here have QNAP and Synology NAS boxes as well as WD ones.

Since you say you have Alexa devices, definitely setup a Dot to send audio out from cable to your stereo. When the Dot first appeared, I bought one to exclusively connect to stereo. We now have 8 of them in house, along with Echo, Tap and even Google Home! We control important lights with them.

Alexa and Plex work great together.
I even posted a link at this forum to help others set it up, and here is that post. It directs you to another longer post at the Alexa forum where i also hang out.It’s a bit long, so spend time with it later if you need to.

Enuff for now. Time to grill the burgers!

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First of all, thank you for your service. I spent 4 years with the Army in the late 70’s and looking to retire this year on my 65th. Sounds like you have very gadget available, probably has a laserdisc player too (I did). Do they still make the WDTV?? Regarding Roku, if you want to get rid of cable, I subscribe to Hulu Live and got most local news, sports and most of the stations I prefer to watch, including the big 3 networks (yuk), but personally I prefer B&W TV, older sitcoms, and documentaries.

Got the bad news from QNAP today – unit is out of warranty (2 yrs.) by 2 months and they want $600 to fix it – a new one via Amazon is $800 – so much for buying another QNAP (though I like its functionality, easy setup) – 2 bad experiences with total hardware failure, nothing RAID could do. If can find a way to make things work w/o an NAS I will, but I do like having it as a ‘cloud’ since we will be living in 2 different places when I retire and having remote access to all the media is a must for me, not so much my wife. Sounds like you live in Seattle or Washington State? We are in PA but will be retiring between MD and FL.

Well, I can say you are definitely an inspiration when it comes to trying all these gadgets. I will definitely try the DOT setup this weekend, but will spend a lot of time trying to decide my next step for storage and playback. Have a great day!

J Solomon

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Yep, we live 20+ miles in the burbs north of Seattle. Been here for over 40 yrs.
,And, yes, I DO have a LaserDisc player. It still plays, but hardly use it much. and have actually copied some LDs using a DVD recorder to move some onto DVD from which I then made a digital file and are on the My Cloud NAS.

No, as I said before, the WDTV has not been made for maybe 5 years now. I found the Fire TV running MrMC app from Amazon to be a good alternative with low entry cost. I can even bring on extended vacation with us. I have a WD wireless drive with much of my media on it that can play directly to tablets, too, because some places wi-fi is terrible.

No, not wanting to dump cable TV. I have actually A-B ed football streaming from network that is also live on TV. Not ready for prime time, because there is a lag,in video that contributes a slight lack of smoothness to action. Much prefer live TV.

Sorry to hear the QNAP is really toast. Do check out the Synology line along with the WD, as I hear they are quite good, too.

You said the magic word in your post: documentaries . . .I mentioned earlier I have a streaming service called Curiosity Stream. It streams documentaries in HD, and I watch it often. I will send you a PM that describes it, and with the link I provide you, gives you a two month free trial period where it is all you can eat before you plunk down any money if you decide to subscribe. I really think you will like it.
Sending PM now.