What happens if the mycloud 'box' gets destroyed?

Hello, please could someone advise what happens to all my files saved onto the mycloud box should it get destroyed? Would it mean I lose everything or can I access my files and photo’s without the box?

Yes.

No.

The MyCloud is not a warehoused cloud storage system. Your data is stored only on the MyCloud device.

It is up to you to maintain backup copies of the data stored on the device, protected and secured as you see fit, to meet whatever data security and recovery needs you have.

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I don’t know about the box, but the hard drive inside, yes, unless you have them backed up on another device.

Everything on my My Cloud is also on my desktop, laptop and other storage devices.

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Thank you for your reply.
So it’s not really a cloud then is it - just a large hard drive

Correct. The My Cloud device is really just a network attached storage device (NAS) with limited remote access capabilities. If one opens the My Cloud they will find a desktop hard drive (WD Red).

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No, it’s just a NAS; a file and media server with some remote access facility.

If you want a cloud storage service with redundant backup, pay for a cloud storage service.

‘cloud’ is a pretty vague marketing term, a bit like ‘cyber’. WD obviously jumped on that marketing bandwagon.

Ditto for me, too. The My Cloud is, in a way, an unofficial backup of my original MEDIA files stored elsewhere. My My Cloud DL2100 is my file server that I can also reach remotely and at home with media players both hardwired and apps on mobile devices such as iPad… Using iPad or iPhone I can either send music media to play on Google Home, Chromecast and Alexa AI devices.

Same for me, I use a more powerful NAS for my day to day media access and storage (2 drives using Raid 0) and my version 1 MyCloud is just a media file backup of that, my Version 2 MyCloud is a media file backup for my version 1.

Grandfather/father/son backups.

Related, but exactly. What is the best (most accepted) way to backup the contents of a MyCloud device? The PC that had the data originally died, so now my only copy is on the MyCloud. Any way to backup directly from the device to an online service? If not, what is a good way to accomplish a backup?

Get a new computer.
Connect it to your network.
Establish drive mappings to your MyCloud.
Copy the data from MyCloud to either PC, or to an external HDD, or to some cloud service.

One can use the Safepoint / Backup option of the single bay My Cloud to backup the My Cloud contents to a USB hard drive attached to the My Cloud’s USB port. Or one could use SSH to setup a Cron job to use Rsync to backup to another local network (or attached USB hard drive) location.

Officially there is no way to backup direct from the My Cloud to an online storage service without using a computer/device as an intermediary. Unofficially, there is the following unofficial mod that may allow for backing up a My Cloud direct to a supported online storage service.

If one uses a computer as an intermediary device one could map the My Cloud to their PC then use the online backup service software to backup that mapped Share to the online service.

Or one can use software on the PC to backup to a hard drive or USB drive on the PC. I use Free File Sync (https://www.freefilesync.org/) to mirror several My Cloud Shares to a USB hard drive attached to a PC as a backup to the daily Safepoint backup that is done from the My Cloud to a USB hard drive attached to the My Cloud.

@vlj111 Really there is no “cloud” anywhere. Do you really think files are stored in the sky? Files are stored on a hard drive, somewhere. In simple terms, if that hard drive is destroyed, the files are destroyed. The “cloud” bit, just means “remote access”.

WD My Cloud devices are ones that you administer yourself (that’s the “My” part of the name), with remote file access through the mycloud.com website (that’s the “Cloud” part of the name).

But note that even when accessing files remotely through mycloud.com, the files you are accessing are specifically those residing on the My Cloud device in your home (or wherever you have it). You have to take the same data backup precautions with a My Cloud device as you do with any data storage device.

Silly humans. The best way to backup a mycoud is to rsync it with another box (either linux, or another NAS.) Rsync does transport compression, and differential copy if partial (or old versions of) files exist. The Mycloud supports it directly.

if its just a WD Red, and something has failed on the front end of the unit, can you pop it open and attach to a hard drive dock and start to recover data?

The single bay/single drive My Cloud units are formatted using the Linux format. If only the My Cloud enclosure or it’s internal motherboard are damaged one can extract the My Cloud hard drive and attach it to a USB to SATA adapter, a SATA docking station, or a spare SATA port on a desktop PC. From there one can attempt to read the drive’s data using Linux (like with Linux Boot Disc) or if using Windows a Linux driver like that from Paragon software or Ext2fsd. More info in the following thread.