Having read some early reviews of the My Cloud Home - I was excited to upgrade from my WD My Cloud. My issues with the WD My Cloud were as follows:
Write speeds were often slow especially on smaller files and would fail sometimes
Timemachine backups would take literally days - so long that I would never really complete a full backup
Software for WD My Cloud was really lacking
So, when my WD My Cloud Home arrived I was excited to try it out, first impressions - the setup was ridiculously easy and the Discovery app seemed a great way to keep everything organised - so suddenly it seemed that my third requirement was sorted.
HOWEVER, there are some major issues with this device and for that reason - I think I will be sending it back shortly.
Write speeds for small files is now even slower than for the previous version Kb/s in some cases
Timemachine backups also not usable - just not worth it
DLNA support has been removed - this was a nice feature on the original My Cloud. So now I am forced to use PLEX to watch my media on our smart TV - I wouldnāt mind that too much however whether its to do with transcoding files within PLEX or something going on within the My Cloud Home - watching a 4k video streaming within the local network at home is impossible. Stopping every few seconds. My home network is good and I am able to stream the videos absolutely fine via the browser or via the mobile on the same network.
I am not sure whether this is early teething issues, similar to when I bought the brand-new MacBook Pro last year and it was terrible for the first month till software releases sorted it out or if this is just a bad product. This is good for someone who doesnāt want to use dropbox, google photos or something of the like because it basically replicates that kind of service. But as a home network drive itās just not worth it.
Have you read some of the posts here about the Home? if you had, you would have learned the Home is not an āupgradeā but rather an entirely different (and non-standard) device.
If you want an upgrade, you need to be looking into the products in the Network Attached Storage category.
There in lies the issue - we should not need to read community forum pages to establish that theyāve released a product which is different yet not better than its predecessor.
As a home storage system for media and photos it should have DLNA - Iām sorry but this is just common senseā¦ We all have smart TVās these days and PLEX is a poor substitute
Agree in part, and I think WD tried to ādummy downā the My Cloud to a detriment.
And, not all of us have Smart TVs today, (although my 2010 TV is much smarter than anyone 's so called āsmartā ones, because of the gadgets I have connected to it.
DLNA (aka UPnP) is a limited media playing format ā I prefer using network .shares/SMB,. and PLEX is not my preferred way to get video on my TV (although I have found it is not a bad app for an iPad where I can watch my mp4 files on the iPad streamed from the My Cloud NAS).
Mind if I ask you whats your preferred way to watch video on your TV?
I want a NAS drive which can be used to stream media all round my house ie family videos, movies, music onto the smart TV. Seems very strange that PLEX cannot transcode 4K MP4v files to be played on the TV when the file is on a hard drive connected to the local network!
I also use a WDTV (Live Plus) and a plasma TV. Too bad WD stopped making them since they have great performance and easy to use interface. They appear to not want to be in the playing of media anymore and have deferred to PLEX since they are putting PLEX capability into their NAS devices today.
I have said in these forums before, I am not a fan of PLEX. It is too overblown, and it will not play my ISO video files without transcoding. The WDTV can play ISO files and MKV files just fine, right off of the server. I do not watch mp4s on the TV. I only make mp4/m4v files wirh Handbrake for playing on smaller-screen mobile devices like tablets and phones. This is what I have found PLEX good for lately since I installed PLEX app on my iPads recently . I have not bought all the PLEX added features like transcoding so Plex is relegated to my tablet use only when at home. I have briefly tried out the remote access feature, and so far it appears to work OK.
I also have some Amazon Fire TV sticks which have the media player Kodi loaded on them. Now, Amazon has allowed a version of Kodi in their app store that is easier to install. It is called MrMC and I prefer it over the standard Kodi now. Even so, Kodi in any format is ātoo geekyā for the average user, and just not as user friendly as WDTV.
Iām new to all this - I actually have a WD TV plugged into my bedroom TV because that one is not smart. To be honest though my LG TV with WebOS plays most media files ā¦ Previously I would stream the videos from my WD My Cloud directly to the TV, but recently the My Cloud has been playing up (had it for 3-4 years). Sometimes the network cannot find the device even though it is plugged in and connected and other times it makes a loud noiseā¦ Could be a hardware failure.
Thatās why I decided to āupgradeā to the new My Cloud Home device. I was shocked/disappointed to find the dumbed down product does not support DLNA and as mentioned previously read/write seems slower than the My Cloud. So I installed PLEX to stream to my smart TV using the LG Plex app. However, streaming is terrible. I am really not sure why PLEX is the go-to solution for WD and it is surprising how un-useful it is considering itās all they specialise in and theyāve been around for so long.
Having done a fair bit of research the past few days it seems that a very powerful NAS is the only way to go to ensure all media files can be transcoded by PLEX. Without wanting to break the budget Iāve decided to order the Synology 116 which will be arriving today - Iām hoping that the performance of this unit will be enough to let me watch my videos across DLNA directly to my smart TV without the unnecessary network consuming transcoding that PLEX needs to do. In some cases Iāll need to optimise / convert my media files for the smart TV to play but it will play .mp4, MKV files off the bat. I do not understand why all this transcoding needs to happen when using PLEX for those common file types seems like a bad service !
I think there might be something wrong with the settings on your Plex. I use Plex for about 2 years. I have it installed on my Mycloudmirror 2 Gen and I can tell you that if a video format is compatible with your tv, Plex allows to play it natively without transcoding. If your tv can play 4k videos natively using DLNA, than Plex should play it without transcoding too
Go to the Plex app on your tv and search for the player settings. On my MacBook Pro I have these two option enabled, that allows me to watch movies directly from the Mycloud mirror without transcodings. The only problem is when I need to burn subtitles. In that situation the mycloud canāt handle the transcoding. So you might need to disable subtitles on Plex setting too, to avoid it from trying to burn subtitles automatically.
Two questions regarding the directly above screen shot:
My Plex is basically set for the defaults, and mine has a check in the above box and I did not place it there. But the DLNA server is also turned on in my My Cloud settings as well and that server is Twonky. So I never thought it would have been needed for Plex to be turned on, too. Any comments on this?
It seems the transcoding is turned on, but since Plex is not displaying my ISO files, or MKV files, I only see my mp4/m4v files. How do I get all my video format files to display?.
Can Plex play from ISO files or transcode them to play?
So, during my short testing of PLEX - I did try to have DLNA enabled and my files within PLEX were showing up as a media server on my Smart TV. However, I noticed that while this was activated the CPU of the WD My Cloud Home seemed to be in hyper drive and would not go into sleep mode even when there was no streaming ongoing.
To be fair this could be due to some kind of conversions going on - but to make matters worse the streaming of my video files was just as bad as when going via the PLEX app. So as you say PEMAMETAL - perhaps it should play the files natively without transcoding but it didnāt seem so.
Maybe Iāve been a bit harsh on the device - its a great service if you basically want an internal dropbox or cloud server to back up your files. But the fact that it is a dumbed down version of the My Cloud is not clear from the marketing on the WD store. I have now received my Synology DS116 and whilst itās a slightly more expensive product its miles faster and does everything I want it to and more. I just feel that WD should be thinking along the lines of APPLE or other big tech companies and try to release products which are an upgrade on previous models in every way rather than just do something different but lose some capabilities. Itās confusing and disappointing to receive something technically less capable than a 5 year old version.
Let me ask a question. I have a My Cloud Mirror 2 Gen 8TB and I am very disappointed with it. I could diagnose that the problem of my device relies on a proccess called ufraw-batch that tries to generate thumbnails from all .CR2 files (canon camera raw) but it gets stuck when the photo is in portrait orientation, really bizarre! That consumes a lot of CPU and RAM
I am tired of searching the internet to solve the problems of the Mycloud Mirror, so when I knew that wd released this new MCH Duo I became very interested, because it costs the same as mycloud mirror and has a much improved hardware. It has a RTD1296PBCG A53(Quad Core) processor and 1GB RAM aganist Armada A385 (Dual Core) and 500MB RAM. See the link below.
You said that you couldnāt stream video using plex. But to be fair, the mycloud Mirror was never able to stream videos if it had to do some convertion, I thought that the My Cloud Home was more robust because I watched a video on youtube where Lon Saidman streamed a 1080p 8GB movie using the Mycloud Home and PLEX. It was not perfect, but it was able to do.
But now you talked about the Synology DS 116, how does it compare to the MyCloud Home?
I want to replace my falty MyCloud Mirror and I am looking for something I wonĀ“t regret later
To be honest, Iām surprised that the specs of the MCH are so good - Iāll take your word for it that the processor is better than the Armada A385 which is also in the Synology. However I did notice in the specs for the Synology that it is a 1.8Ghz version compared to the much lower of the WD ones. Iām not techie enough to understand the ins and outs as someone once explained to me that my Intel processor in my new MacBook Pro was much faster than the one in my older version even though the Ghz was represented as lower. But hey hoā¦
The article above kinda sums it up for the MCH I guess - it did seem slow. I really like the Synology DS116 - the platform is great - very customisable and feature rich. Also I am pretty impressed with the speeds as itās playing media files on my TV which the MCH was not able to via PLEX. If you are a WD Mirror owner and you were thinking of going for the MCH duo then most probably youād want to get the Synology DS226 which is dual disk. That apparently has an even better processor than the DS116 so youāll probably be very happy with it. The reviews all claim you can stream 4K videos with transcoding using it. I personally didnāt feel the need for the dual disc and as I back up everything to dropbox anyway.
It does sound rather like the Home is a bit of a train wreck of a product.
Inconsistent access: Public share can be mapped, but not visible through Discovery.
Private shares can only be mapped whilst Discovery is running.
Discovery doesnāt work on older 32-bit architectures.
No built-in backup. But āwatch this spaceā hints.
Thereās an iPhone app, but not one for iPad; huh? Theyāre both iOS, so it should have been a matter of responsive app interface design. Responsive web design - Wikipedia
No DLNA server.
Terrible write speeds (due, it seems to Discovery getting in the way).
It really isnāt a NAS
It really bears no relation to the older MyCloud family of devices, and yet it continues with the name.
All in all, it sounds like a poorly thought out, prematurely launched product, poorly described by the marketing and name.
To think that WD could have spent the development effort making the MyCloud family work properly, and in a more user-friendly way. What a shameā¦
Seems like you hit the nail on the head.
And, it is causing all sorts of grief in these forums. So much so, that I have stopped trying to help the poor souls who bought this thing. I am leaving it to the WDStaff who come here to help.
Yup - not worth it.
Next hurdle with WD is getting them to send me a returns label to send the frickin thing back! Was told Iād have one in 2 days - 4 days agoā¦
I have just āinstalledā this device. I remain thoroughly and completely confused and frustrated. I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA if my installation was correct. I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA if the device is actually backing up one of my computers. I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA if the device is backing up all of my computers. I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how to restore my computers if one of them crashes.
I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA how to actually USE this device! There was essentially no documentation provided in the box. Iām at a loss how a company can sell such an opaque and irresponsibly mis-supported product.ļ»æ
What should I do? Donāt know. Where is the manual? Donāt know. Is the device working? Donāt know. No button to push? Donāt know.
So, you are saying that WD should be able to sell a backup device, AND NOT
EVEN EXPLAIN HOW DO INSTALL IT?!?!?
Hint: Iāve never installed an external hard drive.
BTW, the first hard drive I ever used had a capacity of 20 MEGABYTES.
Iād like a bit of what youāve been smoking.
