WD MyCloud Duo
BACKING UP BEAUTIFULLY.
NAS BOXES ARE nothing new to us, and if you’re a seasoned system builder, there’s a reasonable chance you’ve assembled one yourself at some point. For the uninitiated, NAS stands for network-attached storage. Essentially, a NAS allows for file storage across a network by a group of permitted users. A NAS system is simply a basic PC that makes those drives accessible, usually with just a rudimentary operating system and an internet connection. In practice, they can work like a personal cloud, enabling you to wirelessly back up your files to a separate machine that functions like your own little server slice.
Of course, what we’re describing here is a home-made NAS box. If you prefer the easy life (no meddling around inside the guts of a half-finished system), there are plenty of pre-built NAS systems out there, many of which are simpler and easier to use than a custommade machine. Western Digital’s MyCloud Home is one such example, aimed at families and working professionals who want a straightforward data storage solution. It couldn’t be easier to use, either – just plug in the power and ethernet cables, and this little white and silver cuboid is ready to go.
Accessing the drive (or drives, in this case; our Home Duo comes with two 4TB hard drives concealed inside) is a quick and convenient process, too. On a computer, it’s as simple as accessing the MyCloud website via your browser of choice, which then functions not dissimilarly to Dropbox or Google Drive – just drag and drop your files there, and they’re automatically saved. Alternatively, you can set up the desktop app’s sync mode, which backs up all the files on a home or work computer automatically. For mobile devices, WD provides an Android/iOS app from where backups (and the MyCloud’s on-drive storage) can be managed.
The mobile app is easy to use, and the browser version should be instantly familiar to anyone who’s used cloud-based storage before. So, the attached software is solid; on to the hardware. The MyCloud Duo 8TB has, as the name suggests, two separate 4TB drives. In its default state, though, there is actually only 4TB of usable storage space (3.51TB after the preloaded software, if you want to be nitpicky). This is because the two drives are set to Mirror Mode using RAID 1, which produces a duplicate of your files on the mirrored drive. While this is a pretty solid fail-safe feature, it does effectively halve the amount of available storage space. Fortunately, you can choose to configure the drives using JBOD for the full 8TB, although paying $600 for 8TB of HDD storage is still somewhat galling, and if the device fails, you’ve lost your data.
There is potential to upgrade, though; the drives inside are two standard Western Digital HDDs, and as such, the top can be removed, and they can be replaced with any compatible drives. If you’re looking to upscale in the future, this could be a decent feature, although the initial price is still a tad high. With a standard Gigabit ethernet connector, your internet speed is theoretically the boundary to transfer speeds before the older HDD connector format gets in the way. However, in our internal tests, we saw speeds of around 40MB/s across a local connection; an unimpressive figure, to say the least. Transfer speed isn’t really a concern if you’re looking to use this as a wireless backup for your data, to be fair; the desktop sync function runs in the background, and because file duplication happens in the box rather than on your system, Mirror Mode has no impact on your day-to-day PC use.
The key downside when compared to a home-brew NAS machine is the lack of true customisability. The Home Duo functions more like an external hard drive with some nifty wireless access functions, thanks to the MyCloud app, rather than the superior functionality of proper NAS systems. There’s no processor, no RAM, no OS. While the desktop app does allow for standard access through the Windows File Explorer, the whole process sits within the confines of WD’s own access software. That’s not inherently a problem, but it could be frustrating for seasoned tech heads who want to tweak their hardware more.