Western Digital launches internet-connected My Cloud Home & Home Duo drives

Western Digital on Wednesday released the My Cloud Home, a network-attached storage (NAS) drive intended to provide both local and remote access to personal files.

The My Cloud Home plugs into a Wi-Fi router, and can be configured using the My Cloud mobile app for iPhone, iPad, and Android. It supports automatic sync/backup of data from phones and computers, and can also be hooked into third-party cloud services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Plex, and IFTTT.

WD itself is offering remote photo and video access via its mobile and desktop apps, as well as mycloud.com. Owners wanting to directly transfer media to the drive can make use of a rear-mounted USB port.

The product allows separate accounts on the same drive for friends and family, and is compatible with Apple's Time Machine backup format.

The standard My Cloud Home comes in 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8-terabyte versions, costing between $159.99 and $319.99.

Alternately buyers can go for the My Cloud Home Duo, which adds a duplicate drive for RAID mirroring in case the first drive fails. The Duo comes only in 4, 8, 12, and 16-terabyte configurations, priced from $309.99 through to $699.99.

7 Comments

makeintosh 65 comments · 14 Years

About 7 years ago

I’m sure these are great but I find the new WD schizophrenic design for all their drives tense and unsettling. Yeah ok, maybe just me but given equivalent functionality, simple appearance wins. Went to Seagate this year for my replacements.

Soli 9981 comments · 9 Years

NAS have so many features these days, but one feature I haven't seen is a security camera data storage system so that you can buy any number of wireless or wired security cameras that will automatically connect to your NAS' local backup (as well backup to any cloud storage you may have) with whatever looping and notification parameters you've set up. If this already exists I'd love to be pleasantly surprised.

Mike Wuerthele 6901 comments · 8 Years

Soli said:

NAS have so many features these days, but one feature I haven't seen is a security camera data storage system so that you can buy any number of wireless or wired security cameras that will automatically connect to your NAS' local backup (as well backup to any cloud storage you may have) with whatever looping and notification parameters you've set up. If this already exists I'd love to be pleasantly surprised.

Synology NASes have some security camera functionality, but I believe the number of devices you can attach to any given one is limited by the hardware AND software licensing.

pcmofo 6 comments · 7 Years

Soli said:

NAS have so many features these days, but one feature I haven't seen is a security camera data storage system so that you can buy any number of wireless or wired security cameras that will automatically connect to your NAS' local backup (as well backup to any cloud storage you may have) with whatever looping and notification parameters you've set up. If this already exists I'd love to be pleasantly surprised.

Many cameras can be set to save video directly to NAS storage (via SMB) or you can use a 3rd party software like Blue Iris that connects to any IP cams video stream, applies rules and monitoring, then saves the videos to the NAS and emails notifications.