Setting up admin + users

I have a new MyCloud device, and a seemingly simple set-up question. I have read the user manual, and read as many threads and reviews as I can find before asking this question.

We have 2 users, but I’d like to set up 3 user accounts - Admin + me (wife) user + husband user, where we both have access to the admin account/password, and we each have individual user accounts.

However, it seems like one of us has to be the admin, plus one user account. Is it possible to set it up the way I want – without putting in a third unique email address for the “admin” account?

We’re not concerned about privacy in terms of accessing each other’s files, but it’s more to keep things organized in our own different ways.

We already went through the setup once, but I’m currently doing a full factory restore so that we can start over to get it the way we want.

If you are asking if you can have more than one User account be configured as Administrator, the official answer is no. There is just one single Administrator account. The single bay/single drive My Cloud Dashboard does not have the capability to assign administrator role/level to accounts.

The workaround if you want to limit access to Shares is to configure them for Private access through the Share’s page of the Dashboard. Then assign User level permission (Full Access, Read Access, No Access) to that Private Share. One can set the Administrator account to No Access on a Private Share to block access to that Private Share. The downside is anyone with Administrator access could go in and change the permission level of the Administrator account to allow for full access to a Share.

Unofficially, and probably not supported in any way by WD, one might be able to use SSH to edit the config files of the My Cloud firmware to allow for more than one Administrator account. Its possible there is past discussion on doing so that might be found using the forum search feature, magnifying glass icon upper right.

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You don’t need to provide an email address for any user account; just hit ‘cancel’ when it asks for the email, and it will advance to the next stage in the user setup. IIRC…

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Hi sunflower123. Yes. I have my cloud setup this way. Go through the initial setup as admin. (per Bennor) bypass or use whichever valid email (yours) that you want. You can use the same email for your personal credit as well. (again Bennor is spot on, only one ‘Admin’) This is better security anyway. Neither of the other accounts should have full rights to the device anyway. Create your root shares that you both want access too. i.e. shared documents etc. Then create the individual users. You will each have a personal share created for you with the user creation. I turned off the public share for music, photos etc. Didn’t care for the idea that even ‘guests’ would be able to access.

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Thanks all.

One additional (perhaps obvious) question - for the Public shares, would anyone has our WiFi password be able to access those? And would the default of no password for the Admin also mean anyone on our WiFi could access that?

Yes. Unless your router provides a ‘guest wifi’ network that is only allowed internet access, and not local network access. That would stop them accessing all the file and media server functions, too; for better or worse…

Yes. (ditto router ‘guest wifi’ comment).

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Thank you!

Is this setup also applies to My Cloud Home? I am trying to find how to change the access rights of the users that I will add in the users but I see that all of the users I added looks like have admin rights too. I am afraid that they can accidentally delete any folder or file. How can I prevent this?

The My Cloud and My Cloud Home are not the same. The My Cloud Home uses a different interface to manage the device. If you haven’t already done so you may want to see the My Cloud Home support site and read the My Cloud Home User Manual which should explain how to configure the device.

https://support.wdc.com/product.aspx?ID=1101

The My Cloud Home also has it’s own subforum where users more familiar with that device may be able to assist.

https://community.wd.com/c/home-cloud-storage/my-cloud-home