SFTP to my MyCloud drive via ddns

I’m a noob to MyCloud drives, and some of the Unix stuff that you folks spout is a completely foreign language to me.

But I’m fairly tech-able, and familiar enough with command line functions (grew up in DOS) that I can find my way around. But networking gets me, sometimes.

I do NOT like how WD set up the MyCloud.com access for these drives, so I wanted to use an already existing free DDNS account that I have to access my new MyCloud 2TB via SFTP.

I turned off “public” access. I set up a user. I found directions here for turning on SSH, giving that user access to SSH, and even defaulting the folder used for FTP by that user.

AT HOME, I can use Filezilla successfully to connect to SFTP on my drive using BOTH the local IP address and my ddns address. I noticed last night that I seem to need to “connect” to the drive before I’m able to do that, however (browse to it from a Windows “run” command using a UNC address). If I DO browse to the drive, the remote/ddns access works. If I don’t, it seems that the drive isn’t visible to my ddns service (or even to me, browsing to 192.xxx.x.x/UI internally via Firefox). So I turned OFF the “sleep” function on the drive, thinking it was “disconnecting” from the network because of sleep mode.

Well, today at work, I can’t see it either. I have a Linksys WRT54GL router between the My Drive and the cable modem, and the ports is open (obviously, or the remote ddns access from home wouldn’t work, either). My Windows computer (and firewall) shouldn’t have anything to do with this, right? Because it’s OFF.

But why does the My Cloud become “invisible” if I don’t first browse to it (which I can’t do, remotely) ?

Sorry if I’m not using the correct terminology or haven’t given all necessary info. It feels like I’m “close,” on this, but am not sure what I’m missing.

Hopefully an experienced member of the WD Community will be able to assist considering there’s no WD-supported documentation related to such proceedings.

Because you want to use SFTP, see the following posts/threads that may have relevant information. Also do a forum search for SFTP for additional posts/threads. Certain directions are for the v4.x firmware My Clouds.

https://community.wd.com/t/sftp-setup/95350/4

https://community.wd.com/t/how-to-setup-sftp-on-my-cloud/152297

https://community.wd.com/t/ftp-dynamic-ip-a-lot-of-problems-with-config-ftp/172868