I’m looking for a NAS solution that will allow me to easily share pictures and videos with friends and family. I don’t want them to have to download an app or create an account. Will the WD My Cloud EX2 give me this ability? Basically, I just want a private link to send to people so they can browse my vacation albums.
I currently have a Synology NAS and have been trying for weeks to make this happen, with no success. There’s some stupid file conversion process that took forever. Been back and forth with their tech support for weeks and still can’t even view some videos via a shared link to photo station from an iPhone.
If the WD system will easily do this, I’ll buy one and get this going. Thank you in advance.
Boy have I been down this road.
At the end of the day. . … I wound up using DropBox and OneDrive for this stuff.
BUT. . . … in the WD world, the WD MyCloud App and the WD MyCloud website are well set up for this service. You can give your friends a link to a user account which has access to specific Shares on the NAS. (Think of a share as a group of folders).
So User “mom” can have access to Shares A, B, C; while your drinking buddy can be given access to shares B,C,D. Most importantly, you can revoke access at any time.
If you don’t want to go through a WD server. . .well, it gets harder. Which is why WD created an App. To bypass the WD servers and the app, you start talking about FTP access to your drive. I forget how access security is achieved. I can’t remember. BUT (somewhat) DOABLE. It gave me a headache when I tried it, but I got it to work. Then I got nervous about Cybersecurity and turned it all off.
To be honest. . . are you sure you can’t do this with Synology? I would imagine the tools are similar.
Going through the WD server would be just fine. All I want is the ability to share stuff without user “mom” or “drinking buddy” to have to download another app or create another account to view stuff.
Synology does do this, sort of. My albums are uploaded, all the pics look great and work perfectly. Videos don’t work when viewing from an iPhone, and when viewing from my MacBook, the video quality is bad. Synology support has had me changing a bunch of settings, and even after giving them access to my NAS, its still not working correctly. This is why I’m looking for a solution that actually works.
Ohhhh. . . .a consumer solution that works more than 90% of the time? Wow. You are asking for a lot.
My experience is a mixed bag.
I find that my NAS boxes communicate great within my home network. The WD app works; Plex works; I can use File Explorer in Windows to access files. VLC on my Tablet can read directories just fine.
When not on my home network. . .things are more sketchy. Mostly, I think the problem is network connection, since I have to get through a router and wifi system at another location. Frankly - - > I find that both plex and the WD app is marginal to unacceptable when playing movies across the internet. I have not tried the website for movies; I suspect that works better.
For files like pictures; yeah, the WD app seems to work for viewing pictures. There is a slight delay as the app loads files. . .which is quite annoying. I have played a bit with the WD MyCloud site → It reminds me of the DropBox or One Drive webinterface - - → Which is fine. At the moment, I do not have “File Explorer access” using a PC to my NAS boxes.(I guess this is an area I wish WD would explore. . .just like OneDrive/Dropbox does it) I have set this up in the past. . .but I thought it was a mixed bag and I got wrapped up in the security issues. Frankly, my solution currently is a USB key with a pile of encrypted files.
Hope this helps.
