PC World Evaluation Team Review

WD My Cloud Home

WD My Cloud Home

Reviewed by Edwina Hargreaves

Working mum

4.00

I would recommend this device for families and small businesses who want one safe place to store all their important digital content and a way to easily share it with friends, family, business partners, or customers.

The aesthetics of the WD My Cloud Home is very appealing in white /aluminium and fits really neatly on the sideboard in our study. I like that a subtle, white light strip indicates the device is turned on and properly connected. I think it’s very well made for everyday use.

Setting up the device is relatively simple, although there are a few steps to follow. I think for novice users who are not very technically-minded this is actually quite easy and intuitive. After you plug in the power and connect the My Cloud Home to your internet modem, you need to visit the MyCloud.com/hello website and follow the prompts for downloading the desktop software. My family uses Apple computers at home and the WD Explorer app installation only took a minute or so to complete. The setup program needed to install its security extensions using Apple’s System Preferences first, which we didn’t have any issues setting it up on our home computers.

The installer then creates a My Cloud Home folder on your computer, and you can start using My Cloud Home right away by copying files from their old folders into the new My Cloud Home folder. Even easier, you can leave your files where they are, right-click ‘Sync to My Cloud Home’. This is actually very straight forward to use compared to Dropbox or Google Drive and I’m thinking I would probably use WD in place of the others, so everything is in the one place. The 6TB version is more than enough for us and we are a family of six, but you can get up to 8TB if you need more storage space or have lots of photos and videos to store, or if you're a business, you can even go up to 16TB with the My Cloud Home Duo.

It is easy to set up for friends and family too: just send them an invitation from the My Cloud Home administration web page, they then set up their own account, and My Cloud Home creates a private space on your My Cloud Home box for them. No-one can see their files unless they share it. This is great for families, because even though all our photos are backed up in a single place, there is still some privacy for each of us. This segmentation is also great for keeping your business documents and records separate from your personal stuff.

If you need Dropbox for business, the Dropbox sync feature automatically keeps up-to- date copies of your Dropbox folders too. The initial copy took a while, I forgot it was running and My Cloud Home sent me an email a day later to let me know it was done. (This automatic sync works with Google Drive,Google Photos, OneDrive, Box, and Facebook.) My Cloud Home’s software is very well integrated with these social and cloud services, once it’s set up you don’t have to think about it. But for most small businesses, My Cloud Home could probably replace these services altogether.

When you install the My Cloud Home app on your phone or your tablet, you can access everything your My Cloud Home box wherever you are (provided your home internet connection is up and running.) This makes My Cloud Home great for small businesses — you can access all your documents and records from your phone, wherever you are.

My Cloud Home can back up all the photos and videos on your phone too. Like Dropbox sync, it takes a while to copy your photo library over the first time, but after that, every time you snap a picture, My Cloud Home quietly backs it up in the background. You never have to worry about losing your photos ever again.

I rate the WD My Cloud Home a 4 out of 5 stars and would recommend this device for families and small businesses who want one safe place to store all their important digital content and a way to easily share it with friends, family, business partners, or customers.

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