I’m sure this question/issue has been discussed; but I’m new here so I don’t know where to look
I got the WD My-Cloud to store and access my personal stuff. However, because it’s connected to my network (via ASUS router/FIOS), anyone on my home network (family) can see the drive (including what’s on it).
Is there a way to keep it from being seen by the other computers connected by wifi? Is connecting the drive through my home wifi a consequence of it being broadcast to everyone who has access to the wifi? I know the ‘dashboard’ can restrict access, but not its visibility on the wifi network. How can I solve this or can it be solved?
As you’ve correctly identified you are able to restrict access via Dashboard. To completely hide visibility of My Cloud I suggest examining the capabilities if your router.
Yes hiding the My Cloud from local network users has been discussed before. One can use the forum search feature, the magnifying glass icon upper right, to search the forum.
There are two basic ways to prevent access to the My Cloud.
The normal way is to setup Users and configure Private Shares within the My Cloud using the My Cloud Dashboard. When a Share is set to Private one sets the User permission access level on the Share. Anyone who doesn’t have a Username/password that has permission to access the Share will be unable to access the Share. They’ll see it but be unable to access the Share contents. The one problem with the My Cloud, which is often complained about, is one cannot officially (through the Dashboard) set the main Public Share folder to Private. As such that Share will always be available. The other issue is that when Media Serving is enabled on a Private Share, any media within that Share will still be accessible to any DLNA client. The solution is to turn off Media Serving for any Private Share you don’t want DLNA clients to access.
The second way to limit or prevent access is through the local network router. Certain routers will allow one to separate or isolate the WiFi network from the rest of the local network. Sometimes called AP isolation or WiFi Client Isolation. You will need to check your router administration pages and or its User Manual (or do an internet search) to see if your router contains that capability.
A third much more complicated way would be to either use a second router, connect the My Cloud to that second router, and configure that router’s firewall to only allow certain IP address through the router’s firewall. Or use certain routers that allow one to create multiple IP subnets and then filter the traffic (by IP address and or by port) between those subnets which would accomplish the same thing as using a second router.
A fourth more complicate way would be to use SSH to change the My Cloud firmware to block certain IP addresses from being able to access the My Cloud (and its Samba/SMB server). Again, do a forum search as I believe this has been discussed in the past in at least one thread.
