I tried numerous times to get secure WebDAV working and have followed everything in the WD Community and nothing I found worked for me (on a Windows PC - Windows Vista, 7, 8.1 and 10). When I did get it working I didn’t need to make any registry edits, update any drivers or purchase any software (and it worked on each Windows version listed above). The issue I found to be strictly with Windows and no special configuration needed to be made to the My Cloud EX2 (other than the standard WebDAV settings).
In short Windows requires that you use a DNS name instead of an IP address to map a drive with WebDAV.
Here is what I did to get it to work:
-
Turn on the WebDAV service on the Settings|Network page. I didn’t bother with the Port Forwarding settings on this page as it attempts to use UPnP to make the changes automatically in the router and that didn’t work for me so I didn’t use those settings.
-
On the Shares page I turned WebDAV on for the share I wanted to be accessible.
-
Since I still needed to setup up Port Forwarding I manually set that up in the router. I setup both 8080 (for http) and 4443 (for https) in the router. I am not going to explain that as it is defined in many places on this WD Community.
At this point you can access the drive using WebDAV from the local network.
The key thing to note is that Windows doesn’t like using IP addresses for the drive mapping. It does seem to allow it for http but definitely NOT for https.
-
Select Map Network Drive from File Explorer. For the Folder path you will want to define it using one of the two methods below:
http://CloudName:8080/ShareName
https://CloudName:4443/ShareName
Where:
- CloudName will need to be the name of your cloud device - You can get it from the Settings|General page, it is the Device Name field.
- 8080 or 4443 will be the port number to use for the local network (no matter what definition you made in port forwarding).
- ShareName will be the name of the share you made accessible to WebDAV. You could also add a subfolder to the share name if desired. i.e.: /ShareName/Test/User1
If the Share is not a Public share you will also need to provide the credentials for the user that has access to the share by selecting to Connect using different credentials before mapping the drive.
An alternative to using the Map Network Drive is to use the net use command at the DOS Prompt instead.
C:\>net use * https://CloudName:4443/ShareName /user:userid password
/user:userid password is optional if you are accessing a Public share.
The http string above can be used instead of the https string if you don’t want to use secure WebDAV.
If you want to access the drive externally using WebDAV or secure WebDAV you will need to do the following:
http access doesn’t seem to care but https requires a DNS name for the drive. The easiest way to do this (if you have authority) is to make an entry in the remote computer’s hosts file.
- You will need to determine your external IP address (google how to do this if needed).
Edit the following file: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
Add a line similar to the following (this example assumes your external IP address is 65.31.100.34):
65.31.100.34 myhouse
You can use whatever label you want instead of myhouse. (Edited) based on further testing do not add a period to the label you use - for example do not use myhouse.com (End of Edit)
-
Select Map Network Drive from File Explorer. For the Folder path you will want to define it using one of the two methods below:
http://DNSName:8080/ShareName
https://DNSName:4443/ShareName
Where:
- DNSName will need to be the name you defined in the hosts file. In this example it would be myhouse.
- 8080 or 4443 will be the port number to use unless you forwarded different ports in your router with port forwarding. i.e.: if you forwarded 1080 for 8080 then you would use 1080 instead of 8080.
- ShareName will be the name of the share you made accessible to WebDAV. You could also add a subfolder to the share name if desired. i.e.: /ShareName/Test/User1
If the Share is not a Public share you will also need to provide the credentials for the user that has access to the share by selecting to Connect using different credentials before mapping the drive.
An alternative to using the Map Network Drive is to use the net use command at the DOS Prompt instead.
C:\>net use * https://DNSName:4443/ShareName /user:userid password
/user:userid password is optional if you are accessing a Public share.
The http string above can be used instead of the https string if you don’t want to use secure WebDAV.
Again swap 4443 with a forwarded port if you defined a different port.
Hopefully this helps.