I’ve had my WDMC since May 2014. I have been pleased with it with occasional frustrations. Being a bit of a computer buff anyway there’s been quite a thrill for me in making something work properly when it doesn’t!
I’ve contributed on here, in particular I hope my backup solution without using Safepoint has been useful. I’ve drawn on the experiences of others in here, and it’s been incredibly helpful, thank you all.
However, I have now grown tired of having to almost daily reboot in the middle of a music track and wait 5 minutes for it all to get going again. It seems the music always stops when we have visitors for the evening! I’ve lost work on the PC because the MC had dropped off the network for a minute or two and my work was (in a gesture of misguided faith maybe) stored on it, and yes my network functions as it should.
The MC is a nice device, it’s reasonably priced, and when it works it’s brilliant, but I would have returned it long ago if I wasn’t an experienced computer system user. It’s temperamental, and I’ve now had enough of it, so a twin bay Synology unit is winging its way to my door.
Sorry to be leaving, thanks for the help I’ve had in here - I’ll still drop by every now and then.
Regards to all
Nick
Staffordshire UK
Same boat. Received my Synology DS216Play yesterday. You’ll find my mycloud on eBay shortly : )
You will find out soon enough if it was indeed the My Cloud or the home network after all.
They say the cloud is always whiter on the other side but in the end everything is just vapours and you are just trading in one fog bank for another.
It would be interesting if you could post opinions and issues after you use the synology a few months
I’ll be more than happy to do that.
I know my network’s not at fault, it’s been thoroughly tested. When I SSH into the MC I find that the Samba service has stopped without any reason, and also the Apache server hangs randomly (I think this may explain folk not being able to access their dashboard). It may be that my specific unit is at fault but enough is enough, I now just want something I can set up and forget about.
Something that I’ve noticed is that the Synology NAS user forum seems to be far less active than this one, could it indicate fewer problems? I appreciate that the outlay for the Synology unit (DS215J) plus a 4TB WD Red is double that for the WDMC, time will tell whether the extra cost was worth it, I’ll let you know.
Edit: It appears my post has now generated a WD Support case, I’ve told them why I’m going!
I promised I’d come back and report, although it’s a bit unfair to compare the Synology to the WDMC, as we’re talking about a setup that’s around twice the cost. I have two WD Red 4TB drives in the case and a WD 4TB Elements USB drive as my backup (in case the RAID controller fails!) I already had one 4TB drive and the Elements drive, so my outlay was about £260 minus the £100 I got for the WDMC on ebay. However, the last month has been a revelation:-
No problem with transfer speeds.
Remote access is solid and simple.
Backups are reliable, no issues with attached USB drive.
Network streaming goes like a dream. The Synology works far better with my WDTV streamers than the WDMC ever did.
I don’t have to keep restarting it, which was an almost daily event with the WDMC - one restart in the last month, because I had to turn the mains off for a few minutes.
It’s been a fairly steep learning curve, particularly as regards setting port forwarding rules on my router, but once done everything worked, and stayed working. It’s so configurable through Synology’s GUI that I haven’t had to use SSH at all.
I’ve configured it as a web server and it’s now my mail server too, very easily done. I’ve also set up two iSCSI LUNs which work perfectly as backup destinations for our home’s Win 10 PCs - can’t believe how easy it was!
My digital life is so much calmer now, the NAS sits under the stairs chugging away doing its job and I can almost forget about keeping an eye on it. So glad I made the move, it was worth the money.
I am planning on doing something similar soon. The WDMC has made me realise that a NAS is an investment and you get what you pay for. I will be going with either QNAP or Synology.
Its also important to remember and understand that the Synology is marketed (and aimed) at a different consumer than the much lower cost WDMC is. There are a fair number of people who would benefit going with the Synology or QNAP rather than the My Cloud, but they go with the My Cloud because they cannot afford the more expensive NAS drives. Some, then are unhappy or frustrated with the My Cloud because it doesn’t perform as they thought it would, or have the features/capabilities that more expensive NAS drives have.
Some, then are unhappy or frustrated with the My Cloud because it doesn’t perform as they thought it would, or have the features/capabilities that more expensive NAS drives have.
Most, I would think, are frustrated because it doesn’t perform as advertised.
As I wrote in a similar forum here, I find my WD NAS from the newest model NAS lines of DL 2100/4100 Series very fast and trouble free as well. There is also an EX 2100/4100 Series with a bit slower processor for a little less $. WD makes good NAS products, too, with WD Red drives in them, but as someone said a few inches up this thread, “you get what you pay for” is true. Any of these brands are good; they better be for the price that is charged for them. I never had a basic My Cloud, and have to say after reading all the bad posts, I am glad I didn’t. If I had, I may not have gotten a DL series NAS and found I liked it,
Are they frustrated that it doesn’t perform as advertised or are they frustrated it doesn’t perform as they expected or thought? Many times its the latter.
Generally the My Cloud does exactly what it is advertised to do. It is marketed as a low cost basic NAS, basic media server, with basic remote access capabilities for the non computer literate. For most it works exactly as advertised, if it didn’t it would be obvious and well known. WD sells millions of My Cloud devices, one cannot go by what they read in this support forum as evidence of how bad the My Cloud is or how wide spread a problem with it may be. Very rarely does someone come to this site to voice how they have no problems with their My Cloud, rather small numbers of people come here to voice or find help to specific issues they are experiencing. A fair amount of the threads here deal with issues that are not necessarily the fault or related to the My Cloud. They are problems/issues that all manufactures face due to people not reading the product documentation, not understanding how to setup/configure the product, or problems on the customers end. Due to the large number of computers/mobile devices with an unlimited number of configurations there may be instances where no product works 100% as advertised.
In certain instances like with Windows 10 and El Capitan the My Cloud gets the blame when in fact it is Microsoft and Apple who introduced those specific problems/issues. In some of those instances there are potential workarounds.
Are there issues with the My Cloud hardware? Yes, its underpowered and there are issues with the USB 3.0 port. Are there issues with the firmware and Dashboard? Yes. Sometimes those firmware/Dashboard/remote access/ issues were introduced by WD. But by and large the device does operate as marketed for a great many people.
Your comment should be placed on every forum on this board! Amen.
I agree … very well said Bennor
