Now that I have my WD MyCloud setup and working (for now) the way I want, and I have an exteranl USB drive connected for backups (Safepoints), I thought I’d post a review of how it’s performed for me, for anyone wondering if it will work for them.
Setup:
WD My Cloud 4 TB Firmware v03.01.04-139
WD My Book 4 TB USB 3.0
** I intend to use the MyCloud as a NAS, and use the MyBook for full / incremental backups for offsite storage **
Full Backup [Safepoint:]:
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I have 1.1 TB of data stored on the MyCloud, and my MyBook drive was empty.
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Safepoint ran for 26 hours. It seemed to stall around 98% for at least an hour, but I just let it run, and it did complete.
> I had no other traffic on the MyCloud during that time.
> I was able to access and navigate the MyCloud dashboard during the Safepoint to check out other tabs and settings, and then just navigated back to the Safepoint tab, selected the run I was running, and it returned to a current status of the running Safepoint.
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Once it completed, I ejected the USB from the MyCloud Dashoard, and connected it directly to my PC.
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I was happy to see that I could access all of the files directly from my PC, within the Safepoint folder (_WDPROT\WDSAFE<safepoint name>).
**** This was an unexpected bonus. I assumed that the only way I would be able to access data in a Safepoint would be to do a restore on the MyCloud. Being able to directly access the files would allow me to access individual files as needed, say if the My Cloud drive fails, without having to buy another MyCloud and do a full restore (26+ hours). ****
Incremental Backup (Safepoint Manual Update):
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I copied a couple new MP3 albums to the MyCloud (about 200 MB worth of data).
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I re-connected the MyBook to the MyCloud and waited for it to spin up.
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I accessed the Safepoints tab, selected my successful full Safepoint (above step), and clicked Update.
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The status indicated the full amount of data to be included (1.1 TB), but within a minute showed 100%, then changed to copying files and I listed the individual .mp3 files as it copied them. It then completed the Safepoint update successfully. The entire process took less than 2 minutes.
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Again, I ejected the USB drive and connected it directly to my PC.
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I could navigate into the Safepoint (the same folder as above, a new folde was not created), and then navigated to my shared music folder and the three new albums were present. I played a couple of the mp3’s (off the MyBook) and they sounded perfect.
I was surprised by how slow it took during the initial full backup to transfer approximately 1 TB of data from the MyCloud to the MyBook over USB 3.0. If the incrementals performed similarly I would have to rethink this as a long term solution. However, I was pleased to see that the incremental backup (Manual Update) was as quick as I would expect, start to finish, considering only 200 MB of data were to be copied. That, and the bonus of being able to directly access the files, within a Safepoint, on the external USB drive on any PC makes this current setup exactly what I have been looking for.
