Railfan Technology > Personal Cloud Storage?

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone has experience with a personal cloud storage device?  I'm not talking about a cloud service like Apples or any of the others
but instead one you own and controll yourself.  My understanding is that this is like a hard drive which you can access like a cloud service from anywhere.

The link below (hopefully it doesn't get stripped out is to a Western Digital one called My Cloud. 

WD My Cloud Device

The price appears to be good and I've had good results with my Western Digital hard drives.  Additionaly it seems from my novice computer knowledge that
WD seems to use better components than most other mfg's hard drives, although after a purchase of another storage device Co. some magazines questioned
wether they would keep up the better components or go to cheaper components like the company they purchased used.

This interests me due to the security of controlling access to it (ie: Family records, work related files, that I want to keep out of reach of others but may need access
to away from home) no worries about the storage going away because the company closes its doors.  Plus it has more storage than I would need even in the near future. 

Now I'm not a computer whiz or even very knowledgeable except that I research what I buy and I can reasonably fumble my way thru working with or on electronics.
So now you know why I'm asking on here.

Thanks for any help in advance.

Kris

I haven't used this WD product but I have my own "remote server" that acts as my "cloud back-up".

If you have the right software and ample bandwidth on each end, it works just fine. The nice thing about this solution is if you have a lot of data you can populate the remote drive locally so all that has to go over the 'Net is the updates/additions. Some cloud service providers allow you to send them a "loaded" drive and they will do this for you but if it's your cloud device, you can do it every time.

Here's the downside though. Most cloud services have a back-up of your back-up. In other words, your data on their end is redundant. They have drive failures too so they generally back-up your back-up. With your own device, unless you buy two of them, you won't have this redundancy. On the other hand, your own drive probably isn't going to see the same amount of use the commercial solutions see so the likelihood of failure is statistically lower.

Personally, I'm fine with not having a real-time back-up of my remote device. I just take a desktop drive and when I see it every now and then (it's in another State), I just back it up manually.

I recently purchased a WD MyCloud Mirror that has two hard drives.  One primary and a redundant drive that back up the primary drive.  Installation was quite easy and I replaced a Segate drive that connected into my wireless router.
This drive also connects to the wireless router.  I copied pictures and documents manually onto the drive.  Have not used any software yet to  backup up my desktop.  Need to do that though.

Pat
South Austin, TX