Using a 3TB WD my cloud as a hard drive

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
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Hi folks,
This is my first thread so hello!
This is probably a stupid question so apologies in advance.

We have a 3TB My cloud which has happily transferred all my photographs from my MacBook Air onto it and it tells me on the desktop icon that there are 30,000 photographs on there which is great but, before I delete them off my Mac, I want to make sure I can view the photographs on the drive to make sure they are all there so essentially, I want to use the cloud as a good old fashioned hard drive where I can plug it into my Mac and pick and drop photographs and files straight into it then view them on the hard drive. Does this make sense?

When I bought the drive, I was told it could be used as a cloud but also as a traditional hard drive but havenā€™t figured it out yet. Itā€™s really frustrating so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance, Denni

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Map your MyCloud into your Macā€™s file system.

Read the User Manual, p23

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/?id=439&type=25

Mapping the Public Folder
To map the WD My Cloud public folder for quick access in the future:

Using Mac OS X Snow Leopard/Lion/Mountain Lion

  1. In a Finder window, click WDMyCloud under the shared items in the side panel.
  2. If presented with an authorization page:
  3. Select Guest and click Connect to display the Public folder:

This is, IMHO, the preferred way of accessing your MyCloud from a computer.Ā  I donā€™t have any of the WD apps installed and my MyCloud is mapped into my Windows file system, just like any other drive; itā€™s a NAS, a network drive, and doesnā€™t need special apps to access it. The fact that you have been confused for this long just shows once again how poor the WD manual is, since it promotes the use of WD apps over much simpler access methods (map the drive into the file system, use the Dashboard to manage the NAS).

1 Like
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Before you detele the pictures always have at least 1 backup (primary + 2nd copy) of any files you care about. 1 local & 1 offsite is betterĀ 

all devices will fail and user mistakes and viruses always happen

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Hello first time posterā€¦

So as I read your post I shudder to think that you want to delete your photos from your Macbook Air.

Of course I understand that is your whole purpose of buying an external hard drive and that is to free up the space that is used on the Macbook Air. However you always should have at least two copies of your files, unless you have a method of retrieving copies like Mp3sā€™ that could be retrieved from itunes.Ā 

Storing two copies on the same hard drive doesnā€™t count.Ā 

Yes, that does mean buying two 3TB WD my cloud drives or one 3TB WD my Cloud and one 3TB WD USB drive for backup.

Alternatively, leave the original on the Macbook Air and use the Cloud as your backup.

Another solution would be to take advantage of the NEW Unlimited Google Photos that lets you upload unlimited photos to the Cloud as your secondary back up storage. Ā Notice that I said secondary back up meaning donā€™t go returning your WD Cloud drive and just use Google Photos as your primary storage.Ā I would never trust Google as a primary storage medium as they have the right to take away the service at any time thus losing all your uploaded photos, they could delete your photos anytime, resize or compress your photos thus changing the quality of your photos, Ā they could even possibly use your photos for advertising although unlikely since everyone would cry foul, but Ā at least you have a secondary copy of your photos.

I understand that many people are doing exactly what you are doing and that is moving your photos and other files from the main computer over to the external drive and had had no problems.

However once you have lost all your files ā€œjust onceā€ due to hardware failure or other reasons, you will begin to understand that keeping one copy is never enough.Ā 

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larryg0 wrote:

Before you detele the pictures always have at least 1 backup (primary + 2nd copy) of any files you care about. 1 local & 1 offsite is better 

 

all devices will fail and user mistakes and viruses always happen

I was just typing up my warning to find your warning before mineā€¦ good job!! :slight_smile:

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Good point, well madeā€¦

Users migrating from commercial, web-based cloud services might labour under the impression that a simple ā€˜personal cloudā€™ like the basic MyCloud offers data protection with some sort of redundancy. But it doesnā€™t: itā€™s just like any other hard disk; if your MyCloud dies and you donā€™t have a backup, your data is GONE.

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I understand that many people are doing exactly what you are doing and that is moving your photos and other files from the main computer over to the external drive and had had no problems.

And then suddenly they have a problemā€¦

http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/My-Cloud-Drive-Not-Working/m-p/876579