IT Pro Verdict

Not the fastest or best featured NAS appliance but it’s cheap and cloud access is a cinch to configure

Reasons to buy

+
Good value; Easy installation; Simplified cloud access; Quiet

Reasons to avoid

-
Short on storage features; Unimpressive backup performance

By Dave Mitchell

published 29 July 2015

in Reviews

Deployment and mobile access

Installation took 10 minutes and the browser quick start wizard gets cloud access sorted out straight away. We created new accounts and on completion each user was emailed a link to the WD My Cloud portal.

It shows the appliances they can access and provides download links for WD's SmartWare backup software plus desktop and mobile apps. With the Windows app installed, they could browse their shares, drag and drop files to the appliance and email links to selected files for other users to download.

Enabling remote mobile access on each user's account produces a 12-digit code that's valid for 24 hours. After entering this in the iOS app on our iPad, we gained direct access to the appliance and could view our shares and play back music.

The WD Photos iOS app may prove handy for budding photographers. With this on our iPad, we could upload selected photos from the Camera Roll directly to a dedicated share on the appliance.

WD's Dropbox app provides file syncing services but only for one account

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Dave is an IT consultant and freelance journalist specialising in hands-on reviews of computer networking products covering all market sectors from small businesses to enterprises. Founder of Binary Testing Ltd – the UK’s premier independent network testing laboratory - Dave has over 45 years of experience in the IT industry.

Dave has produced many thousands of in-depth business networking product reviews from his lab which have been reproduced globally. Writing for ITPro and its sister title, PC Pro, he covers all areas of business IT infrastructure, including servers, storage, network security, data protection, cloud, infrastructure and services.