I’m pretty sure that I will get no satisfaction on this web site, but I just felt that I had to show my disappointment to Western Digital. First of all, I did NOT choose a “low end” NAS. I had no presumptions that they even made “low end” products. These statements are made in reference to someone on this forum making the statement that low end NAS products did not have the ability to have third-party applications downloaded onto them.
So, a little background. I have had two My Cloud NAS devices along with a My Book Live, as storage devices for quite a while. They are the model WDBCTL0020HWT. Now, it is true that I did not pay an arm and a leg for these devices, but in no way did I think that they were “low end” products.
Now, I have used these devices to store all of my files; from documents, to music, to video files. I use my Roku 4 device’s RMP (Roku Media Player) to access my movies through my WD My Cloud device. It all works pretty good except that I don’t enjoy having to “click” through all of the folders just to access my movies. Someone suggested that I use Plex Media Server. And this is where it led me, because I could not install the Plex app onto my NAS drive.
Here is my question. Why does WD not allow apps to be installed on these devices but does allow them to be installed on “higher end” NAS drives? Isn’t it just a software update needed, or is it hardware related?
OK, I am finished with my rant. I guess I will just go back to my original process of accessing my movies. Good night…
Vertical market differentiation. You bought the lowest product in the family, that costs barely more than the HDD it contains.
Now, if you had searched this forum for ‘install apps’, you might have found this thread:
If you have a gen2 MyCloud, you should be able to get around WD’s vertical market differentiation, and install apps on your device.
As for ‘having to “click” through all of the folders just to access my movies’, I’d suggest that is more to do with your Roku media player than the MyCloud; I don’t have that problem with Kodi, or the DLNA media players I use.
Thanks! Yes, I do believe the Roku Media Player is the culprit for the “clicking”, which is why I wanted to try Plex. And thanks for the suggestion. I will check it out.
That person was probably me. You may not think you were buying a low (or lower) end NAS by choosing the single bay/single drive My Cloud device, but you were. The single bay My Cloud units have the FEWEST features of the My Cloud product line. One only needs to look at the My Cloud line and compare products to see this.
WD even has a Knowledgebase article detailing the differences between the various My Cloud offerings.
Compare the cost and features of the single bay My Cloud to NAS devices offered by WD’s competitors and you’ll find that typically the single bay My Cloud is cheaper (sometimes much cheaper) and has fewer feature.
Compare the cost of a WD Red drive (which is found inside most if not all single bay My Clouds) to the cost of a similar sized single bay My Cloud and you’ll find the cost of the My Cloud typically runs $40 to $60 (US dollars) more than the drive itself. So for that $40 to $60 one gets a basic NAS, media server that has limited remote capabilities.
Not sure if this is a serious question or just one born of frustration in buying a product that doesn’t do everything one; thought, hoped, or assumed it could do.
Many manufacturers have vertical products lines where the products rise in price as more features are enabled or added to the product. Car manufacturers do this. Computer makers do this. LOTS of manufacturers do this.
If one has a v2.x version single bay My Cloud then count yourself lucky that one can enable the Apps tab feature to add additional apps (https://community.wd.com/t/wd-mycloud-gen2-enable-apps-install-tab-apps/177885/). We 4.x users don’t have this option and have to resort to, sometimes ugly, hacks to provide some of the app capabilities offered by even the next model up, the My Cloud mirror.
You will still have to so some clicking, but not as much, if using Plex on the Roku. I too use a Roku (several of them) with a single bay My Cloud and have to click four or five times in the Roku Media Player interface to get to the “Album” listing where I can view/scroll left/right folders holding the various shows/documentaries that I have along with the movie folder. The key is to either use the metadata tags (album, year, title, comments tags) and the data will be parsed and sorted for easier display on the Roku. Or use folder names. One can even use embedded artwork or a folder.jpg file in the folder to show artwork for the folder when viewing on the Roku.
Yes its frustrating at times but I’ve grown to live with it ever since Roku introduced the Roku Media Player channel four or five years ago.
Thanks Bennor. Sorry for making you look like the “bad” guy! Thank you for enlightening me on the differences of the devices.
Now that I know the differences, I took a closer look at my two My Clouds. One of them is a Gen 1, but the other is a Gen 2, so maybe there is a little light at the end of the tunnel. I will look more closely at the link and see if I can include the Plex app. I won’t hold my breathe, and worst case, I will be satisfied with the way I access movies now. Thanks again!
For gen 1 v4.x single bay My Clouds there was the following post that indicated it is possible to install Plex, but one had to replace the My Cloud OS/firmware with with clean Debian.
That is promising news, but I think that I will try the Gen2 My Cloud first. I will definitely copy that link.
My concern right now is that I am having a little trouble with following Fox-exe.ru’s “dirty hack”. I haven’t really delved in Javascript much before, but will continue to give it a try.
I have a quick question. I am trying to backup my NAS before making any changes to it. I decided to make an internal backup which is taking quite a long time. Before I started I had about 1.05 T free on a 2T My Cloud. The backup process is about 1/3 done and my dashboard now shows about 795 GB free and dropping. With that in mind, will my device end up with very little free space at the end of the backup? Maybe I should have backed up to another NAS? Just asking.
What are you backing up too? A USB hard drive attached to the My Cloud? If so, if one has USB Content Availability enabled through the My Cloud Dashboard > Settings the My Cloud will include the USB hard drive’s free space into the total amount of free space displayed on the My Cloud Dashboard Home screen’s Capacity section.
I did an internal backup onto the smartware section of the My Cloud device. Not a “smart” idea, it turns out. I now have 159 GB left out of 2 TB. It appears that it took and made a copy of EVERYTHING on the device. Not sure if I can transfer it to my My Book Live, but will give it a try.
