WD Mycloud safepoints and windows/mac compatibility

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud
1

Hello,
My apologies if this has been covered before but I have used search and checked the FAQ’s and can’t find this covered specifically.

I have just bought a Mycloud and am very happy with it so far, using it to centralise all my files and backup both my MacBook Air and PC. I am keen to make a backup of the Mycloud and plan to use an external hard drive and safepoints to do so.

However I am a little confused about formats and want to make sure everything will work as I want it to before I buy another external hard drive. So far I have been using the mycloud interchangeably between my mac and pc, reading and writing with no issues, and I understand that this is because the mycloud is pre-formatted to do so. Thus it contains files that originated from a mac (eg time machine backup) and a pc (eg various spreadsheets, and my pc backup). What happens when I plug in an external hard drive (ed WD passport or something) and set off the safepoints backup? I understand that a WD passport comes pre formatted for pc (not mac), so will the time machine files not get copied? Or will they get copied but I won’t be able to use them? I want the safepoints backup to just be a straight copy of what is on the mycloud so I can use it exactly as if it were the mycloud (should the mycloud fail).

Sorry if this is a stupid question, perhaps it just exposes my lack of understanding about windows/mac formats.

Thanks
Sam

2

Have you read through the User Manual?

Posted by,
cat0w (USA)

3

Yes - it didn’t help.

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Sam_J wrote:
Hello,
My apologies if this has been covered before but I have used search and checked the FAQ’s and can’t find this covered specifically.> > I want the safepoints backup to just be a straight copy of what is on the mycloud so I can use it exactly as if it were the mycloud (should the mycloud fail).

Sorry if this is a stupid question, perhaps it just exposes my lack of understanding about windows/mac formats.

Thanks
Sam

    • *> Not a stupid question at all, the user manual doesn’t cover this aspect of safepoints.> I have a 3 TB MC with a 4 TB My Book Studio alwaays connected. I formatted the My Book ext4 (one of the native formats for Linux) I have backups scheduled for 2 Windows 7 pcs, 2 Linux pcs, and a Mac Book Pro. When I connect to My Book Studio as a registered user I see all the backups stored in a folder named _WDPROTECT> There are protocols used by your MC that enable reading the files (NFS, AFP, SMB)
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Thanks for your reply. Does this mean I need to ensure the external drive I back up the mycloud to should be in a particular format?

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Sam_J wrote:
Thanks for your reply. Does this mean I need to ensure the external drive I back up the mycloud to should be in a particular format?

I don’t think so, just try it and test! I suspect that a My Book Studio will be natively formated in a Mac accessible format.