So I had a WD myBook Live before and it died seemingly randomly. I had it maybe 4 or 5 years, which I suppose is a long time for a computer, but for something simple like a basic NAS, I was surprised. It was had a lot of period issues with Time Machine. I'd have to create a whole new backup every 6 months or so. Really annoying since that takes hours- like start it before bed and check it's progress in the morning.

I still don't trust this WD product, but set up was very easy. Like, really easy. WD figured that part out at least. The one thing they should have done better was give me a very clear option right in the beginning like "do you want your content accessible anywhere in the world or only at home?" so I know that I've got this thing locked down as securely as possible. This is just for time machine, I don't need a third place to put photos.

I've had this about 2 weeks and so far it's been working as I expect it to: for me to completely forget I have it.

Great piece of tech for my home office. I can access it from out of state when I go on vacation and work away from home via internet. Only downside is that you can't plug it directly to your computer and load stuff that way. Took a long time for me to move my 2GB of stuff through network. Then I realized I could just plug my external hard drive into the USB jack and voila, it's online too!!! MyCloud has it's own electric plug so it is enough to sustain my failing 500MB external harddrive that won't even start up when plugged to my computer.

After years of having multiple "Back-Up" external drives, I finally bit the bullet and bought the WD 4TB My Cloud. I couldn't be happier. I have been able to consolidate all my files into one place. I love that they are accessible to any one of my computers. That I can get to my files as I travel is a major plus, yes this drive has remote capabilities. This drive is simple to install for those who are computer savvy, but I can see it being a bit more difficult for those who struggle with computers.

When I received my drive, the first thing I did was unpack it and read through the documentation. Following the instructions, I set it up, install the needed software, then create the files I needed it to house. I then mapped several drives to My Cloud. Which then makes it super simple to access anything from my main computer.

When you access My Cloud Drive Properties, you can change the needed settings.
Key to this is utilizing the dashboard, then going through each setting. (I have included a few pictures of the dashboard for your viewing pleasure.)

I have mine set to a static IP, power saving off, Auto Updating and so on. One of the bonuses to this drive is you can add an additional USB drive to the back of the unit, in order to create a safe point. This will help you recover data should your drive fail. It takes an image of the drive that can be used to restore your information to your drive. Remember however that recovery is only as good as the last safe point you have created.

If you are worried about what people will see if you give them access to your Cloud, then you have no worries. You can set each folders access list. Like any large network out there you are in control of who can view which files you wish. This is especially nice when your collaborating with someone on a project.

So if your looking for a reliable personal cloud, and you are able to read instructions, you should be able to set this up with little to no effort.

Setup was pretty easy, plug it in, download some software, a little glitchy especially when I started uploading files right away from multiple computers and it wanted to update firmware but this was resolved in less than a half hour.

The Real Issue: This is NOT a fast cloud service. Anyone using google drive will be greatly disappointed in the speed at which things come up, or don't come up when looking at your cloud. I'm on day one, maybe it will get better but there's no reason I shouldn't be able to see a preview of my music or pictures within 5 seconds. All I see is a cloud swirling and swirling around like it's thinking forever. Borderline defective as of right now.

Also when dragging from folder to folder within the cloud it does not stay on the folder you are dragging from like it should, instead it switches over to the NEW location. What this means? If you are dragging multiple files, which is fairly common you literally have to find the old location after moving EVERY SINGLE FILE. Well then you say, why not select multiple files and move them all over at once? THE "WD My Cloud "DOES NOT LET YOU! Ridiculous.

Day three: This is a nightmare. Several thousand files failed to transfer over (who knows why) and I have no idea which ones. It would be easier at this point to wipe out my cloud drive and start over , I STRONGLY suggest if you use this item at all that you have EVERY file sorted BEFORE putting them into this convulted, hard to nagivate, NOT touch screen friendly storage drive of hell.

Greatly disappointed so far.

WD MyCloud 3TB
I purchased this device to have a networked online shared library for my files. I am a software developer and have many PC's connected to a network at home and need a common repository for my files without having to have a PC running constantly to serve these files. I also had in mind to be able to access files remotely from client sites without having to sync with and carry around a USB drive.
So I installed it using the quick guide and that was easy enough; however it installed a bunch of unneeded software including Apple Bonjour used by a useless utility showing the shares exposed by the drive and I came to realize that the remote access apparently goes through a Western Digital web server. So you receive an email with a link to set up external access and if you follow this link you are redirected to the Java install site. So to access your files remotely you need to have Java installed on the PC accessing the MyCloud device through their server. This is unacceptable for me since I do not and cannot expect client PC to install Java since it is a security risk at the least and it wastes space and computing power to a sub-system not needed for anything else. So for me forget the internet access. I will have to install a VPN for this or resort to FTP (which it apparently supports but I have not tested.).
Ok, so I read many horror stories about earlier versions of the Firmware of this device related to the IP address changing through HDCP and the first thing I did was go into my router and assign the WDMyCloud device a permanent IP address through my router's HDCP reservation feature so the IP address won't change. So how does it work on the local network? First off, unless you have a Gigabit LAN and have your PC connected with network cables it will be slow. If you have modern fast WIFI "n" or "ac" it may be OK for streaming media but it will still be slower than a typical USB drive. The device appears to have some sort of processor in it and at one time I saw an indication that it identified the internal file system as Unix or Linux. Not sure exactly if that is what it is; however, it is quite slow, probably has a low power ARM processor of some description. Of course you get what you pay for the 3TB version selling for around $150 so this is not entirely unexpected. WD themselves have much better SAN drives for roughly double the money so we can't expect too much.
I copied a large library of files to it and got between 10 Mbs to 60 Mbs depending on whether I was copying many small files or fewer large ones, large files appear to copy faster. For me this is fast enough for what I am using the device for. So the drive has an internal web site (Dashboard) for setup like many routers and other networked devices and can be accessed from any browser via it's IP address like HTTP://192.168.1.141 in my case; it also exposes shares via the Windows Network section in Explorer so you can map these to network drives. It does all this without having to install any software at all. Having realized this I uninstalled all the software that got installed from the steps in the Quick Setup guide since it was superfluous for my use case; good riddance.
The Firmware in the drive is quite "brittle" meaning that it has a number of anomalies and bugs that may need you to reset or reboot the drive at times or to work around at times the Setup Web Pages may stop responding properly. I think its dysfunction may have to do with the fact that a foreign operating system and file system in the device is trying to expose itself as a standard Windows network shared drive and it is apparently not really 100% compatible. ( I do not have a MAC so I have no idea what it does on OSX)
At one time it did not want to copy a file with a .jpeg extension but after renaming it with a .jpg extension is was happy. It also did not like copying links containing urls apparently.
On my local LAN, I don't care much about security so I have made everything public without any passwords. However, several times trying different options I was presented with a logon dialog on the shares and none of the known user ids and passwords worked with it showing a security incompatibility with Windows (7 or 8.x)
The device does not have an on/off button (and I did not notice the Reboot / Shutdown feature on the of the Settings/Utilities page until later) so I wanted to move it, therefore I shutdown all the computers and unplugged the power cord. Then when I plugged it back in and turned it on the existing shares on the computers did not work anymore claiming I did not have security access and the log-on dialogs as mentioned earlier did not work. I had to use the Settings/Utilities/Factory Restore "“ System Only feature to make it work again.
Next I tried to set-up the SafePoint feature on the Settings Dashboard to make a backup of the settings and data on the device. However, this is bug riddled and very slow and unusable. I tried to use a Network share and it started and created the backup files but after a few minutes it stopped with an error: "SafePoint-create_NaN" with an error code of 200000. Now as a developer I know that NaN (Not a Number) results from trying to use a floating point number that is invalid or uninitialized with would be a true bug. Then I tried to plug in a USB drive to the WDMyCloud device's USB port and tried to use it for the SafePoint backup but after copying 17% of the 80 or so GB on the drive it failed with the same error. It also showed it is very slow; much slower than copying files to and from the drive. So this is not a usable option either. So I am not impressed with the quality of the Firmware, I would give it 4 out of 10 and would not recommend the device to anyone except someone with above average technical skills.
Now I do not intend to use it for streaming data to mobile devices so I have not tried any of that. Would I recommend the WD MyCloud? No, spend a little more money and buy a real NAS drive.