WD 8TB My Cloud EX2 Ultra 2-bay NAS - Network Attached Storage RAID, file sync, streaming, media server, with WD Red drives

A very well priced product when compared to other NAS drives however no manual came with it and the online version is not easy to navigate through. The one feature that is missing is a desktop app. Instead you have to map drives so windows can see the shares and folders you have created. The lights on the unit stay on all the time even when the NAS is not active. Overall I am pleased with the unit but early days with regards to reliability.

I bought this as a media server for the home when it was discounted at a price that was too good to turn down. As a back up to cease reliance on a cloud based solution it works well. The software is limited however, PLEX is easy to load and works well for content saved on the hard drive however live tv does not work well as the server is not really powerful enough to manage it without regular buffering. The WD support team have been reasonably helpful but probably I have expected too much for what is a very reasonably priced solution. For a basic NAS server this is excellent value and compares well with others at almost double the price and is very easy to set up for a novice.

not being a computer expert has posed some challenges in my life dealing with technology, but not with this home cloud, i bought a cheaper version by another company and the devise asked me to download a 'firmware' on USB and then press the blue button for 5 secs and that's where i knew that this isn't for me, followed that i bought this WD and haven't looked back, easy to setup and work as intended. I just wish i could some how back up my IOS devices to this.

Despite some negative reviews, I am very pleased with this NAS. It took a couple of attempts to get it to work but I am now viewing films and listening to music wherever I like. There are technical issues that still exist but these do not affect the performance and are frustrating only in as much as I cannot resolve them.

I'm finding this incredibly clunky. The software interface is very difficult to understand. Simple tasks… aren't. Copy speeds are very low (58 hours to copy 10TB to RAID 0, compared with 23 hours to do the same thing between other RAID 0 drives on the same home network) The hardware runs very hot. According to the S.M.A.R.T. readings, the fan doesn't kick-in until the disks hit 50°C. They're currently operating at 56°C and 57°C respectively, with no load, which is definitely not something I'd like to see outside the short-term. Update. After a few months of trying to get along with this, I've decided to throw it in the bin. It's a terrible, terrible piece of kit. As I suspect is the case for many people, I only purchased it to shuck the drives, so it's no particular loss – but I had hoped the device itself would prove to be a useful bonus. It hasn't. The connection is capricious and a daily backup, which takes 30 seconds on other devices, takes an hour on this – though some days it inexplicable decides to wipe everything and backup a full 12TB, which takes it about a week. I'm tempted to keep it for the winter as a heater, because it certainly isn't useful as a NAS. Possibly the problem is that there's something I'm doing wrong, and somewhere within the unnecessarily complicated instruction epic there lies a solution – but that would amount to largely the same thing: a product that isn't fit for purpose.

The My Cloud EX2 Ultra is easy to setup and attach to your existing Wi Fi. My Ex2 Ultra device was already setup for RAID 1 which is the type of security I wanted and it was just a matter of creating a network drive on my PC, I could then start backup up my PC and saving my photos to the drive. There is a great choice of utilities to download, but to date, I have only used the anti-virus scanner.

Let's face it, Time Machine cuts out a lot of the required setup of devices like this so of course it was easy to install and use because you just hook it up, activate Time Machine and you're done. It is when you are activating other features that it can get a little clunky, like access to files away from home etc. The interface is not great and often takes a little while to load up. That said, there are one-click installs for a bunch of neat stuff that you can use to gain extra utility from your My Cloud. I was looking at other more 'advanced' solutions, but for Mac users there really is not much point to anything more than this for your Time Machine setup. I have some shared folders for transferring files between my machines, I have a few synced directories (no version control - so be careful) and some public-facing directories. I have yet to utilise any web server features but might test a one-click WordPress install soon.

The product is well packaged. Once out the box you only need to connect the power and the ethernet cable and it is ready to go. Most of the data back up features are automatic, so once you download the applications everything is a breeze. It would be great if the product was secure, but it is not. As it has a RAID system, just be mindful that the total storage space available is 4TB and the other 4TB is used to mirror the data, to minimise the possibilities of data loss. I would definitely recommend the product for home users who would like to store non-personal data. The size of the product is also very utilitarian, it can be easily put away in a cabinet or a drawer.

Prijs/kwaliteit zeer goed. Makkelijk te installeren en vlot in gebruik via de laptop of via de mobile app.

Very happy with this purchase. I consider myself tech literate but I am by no means a network specialist. Had no problem setting this up in RAID 1 (basically a mirror mode - each 4 TB HD mirrors the other so that if one fails, an exact copy of your data is still safe on the other HD), mapping network drives and accessing via the cloud on my laptop and phone. Speeds are great and the dashboard is intuitive and easy to use. I've now moved 500GB+ of data to the drive, backed up all of my videos and pictures, and am running a full image backup. My data is secure and super easy to access centrally on my home network and through the cloud. Some of the reviews on Amazon US mention that the NAS has a tendency to disappear from the network after a while and only comes back after a hard reset. I haven't had this issue yet and it's been running flawlessly, but it's only been a week. Hoping it stays that way - will update this review if I run into issues.

De momento se comporta bastante bien. El software del está bien, sin florituras, tiene lo necesario y punto. Se pueden hacer muchas cosas, SSH, Compartir en Windows, Acceder desde el Navegador Web para configurarlo, Acceder por el Navegador de archivos, Actualizar el firmware de forma sencilla, instalar algunas aplicaciones interesantes como PLEX (para el envío de videos a la TV), configurar horarios de ahorro de energía, configurar varias cuentas (el móvil de tu pareja, de tu hijo, etc.). Ponerlo en modo RAID 1 (todo por duplicado). Y responde de forma "aceptablemente" rápida al acceder. Además la Web de ayuda y foros tienen bastante información. "Un cacharro" bastante completo para un uso "casero". Ya me he bajado los 80GB de fotos de Google Fotos y tengo configurados los moviles para que suban todas las fotos. Además con Acronis True Image (versión gratuita ofrecida por Western Digital en su Web) y la aplicación Syncfolders (gratuita) puedes programar copias de seguridad de carpetas y réplicas (copias o sincronizaciones) automáticas desde el PC. Esto sumado a la APP en el movil cierran el circulo (mi círculo) de necesidades que no se cubren con Google Photos o Drive por el precio que tienen y la cantidad de almacenamiento que ofrecen. Tiene sus ventajas, está claro. Desventajas...pues claro, es un "aparato" más a gestionar en tu casa, necesita alimentación (obvio) , un cable de Red más conectado al Router, hace ruido la ventilación cuando los discos se calientan (no siempre) y podría fallar...como todo "aparato". Pero por el precio y si eres usuario "avanzado" (te manejas con el ordenador)...está muy bien.

Tout d'abord, ce NAS est juste excellent ! Il est rapide, bien optimisé et très facilement réglable. Je regrette que l'aération soit en haut car les disques durs vont prendre la poussière, à moins que la ventilation soit continue ? Je n'entends rien :D Ce qui m'a plu, c'est que je n'ai eu qu'à le brancher à la prise ethernet et au courant pour que tout fonctionne comme par magie. Il suffit de se rendre sur le site MyCloud et il détecte le NAS tout seul. Plus qu'à rentrer un mot de passe et le tour est joué. La configuration des disques est en RAID 1: 2 disque durs de 4 To où les données sont automatiquement répliqués. C'est le moyen le plus sûr pour ne perdre aucun fichier si un des deux disque durs tombe en panne. On peut évidement passer en RAID 0 pour que les 2 disques durs se rassemble et forme un gros disque de 8 To ultra-rapide mais je préfère la sécurité en dupliquant mes données ^^ Il y a aussi la possibilité d'activer le serveur FTP, le WebDav et le SSH d'un simple clic. Il suffit d'aller dans la section "Dossiers partagés" pour autoriser un utilisateur à voir tel ou tel dossier, c'est très facile :) Le fait de pouvoir s'y connecter en SSH m'a permis de migrer mon ancien drive OwnCloud qui était hébergé sur un Raspberry Pi 3. Les commendes "scp", "zip" et "unzip" ont pour celà été très utiles que ce soit sur le Raspberry ou le NAS. Aucun problème de droit d'accès. En parlant d'OwnCloud, le système du NAS est beaucoup plus efficace de par sa puissance mais surtout graçe au fait que les fichiers du disque dur est automatiquement affiché dans l'interface web (ou l'application smartphone), là où OwnCloud scannait d'abord les fichiers afin de les stoquer en BDD pour ensuite les afficher. Ici, que j'ajoute un fichier via un script linux automatique ou en FTP, le fichier apparait automatiquement sur l'application. C'est tout bête et ça change la vie. Concernant les miniatures des images, j'ai l'impression qu'elles ne sont stoquées nulle part dans le serveur. Un peu dommage mais il est tellement rapide que je n'ai pas trop de problème de visu. Je suis sur macOS et il n'y a effectivement aucune application pour se connecter à part le serveur web très limité... J'utilise l'application Transmit (sur macOS) ou FileZilla pour importer ou parcourir mes fichiers, c'est 2 fois mieux. Le serveur Plex pré-configuré (suffit de l'activer) est juste génial ! Si on a une bibliothèque de films et séries stockés sur le NAS, ils sont automatiquement pris en compte par Plex. Plex est une application qui ressemble très fortement à Netflix. Seulement, si on a aucun film ça ne sert à rien. Personnelement j'en ai plein et ça me permet enfin d'uploader des films et des séries TV via mon ordinateur pour ensuite les visualiser sur ma télé (Nvdia Shield - Android TV) sans avoir à m'y connecter en HDMI ou en brnchant une clé USB ... Petite note pour finir, utilisez l'application Kodi au lieu de Plex sur votre télé ! Kodi permet de se connecter au serveur Plex sans transcoder les vidéo. Grossièrement, lecture sera 4 fois plus rapide et sans saccades ;) En effet, l'application Plex (sur android) convertit les vidéos au format adapté à l'appareil qui les visionne mais ça prend un temps monstrueux :O Résultat: On est des vidéos qui prennent 10 ans avant de se lancer et qui n'arrête pas de se couper chaque 10 secondes. L'application smartphone est super à mon goût mais la partie synchronisation automatique avec mes photos/vidéos ne fonctionne qu'en ouvrant l'application et on ne peut pas configurer d'autres dossiers ... J'utilise alors l'application Synchronize Ultimate. Vous avez eu les réponses à vos questions ? Faites-le moi savoir :D

Uso questo prodotto come backup di lavoro supplementare, è anche collegato a una vpn che mi consente l'accesso sicuro ai miei dati in remoto e la sincronizzazione di cartelle condivise tra più computer Desktop e Laptop per sempre gli stessi dati aggiornati a disposizione. Per la sincronizzazione uso WD Sync è programma leggero che sta facendo il suo dovere. La configurazione è stata estremamente semplice, la macchina è immediatamente visibile nelle reti microsoft e apple. Volendo, può essere utilizzata anche come server ftp. L'interfaccia gestita dal browser è semplice e abastanza intuitiva. C'è voluto poco per creare utenti, condivisioni e backup. Tra le altre caratteristiche è possibile utilizzare il servizio cloud di wd, utilizzarlo per effettuare download http, ftp e p2p; installare un client emule; utilizzarlo come media server; usarlo come server per un'istanza wordpress, joomla o phpbullettin; installare un antivirus; e infine installare dei programmi di sincronizzazione con il cloud. Non sono convinto che possa fare tutte queste cose al meglio, siamo arrivati alle note dolenti, non ho provato elephantdrive (che mi è sembrato a pagamento) né dropbox, ma ho utilizzato l'app per collegarsi a S3 di AWS, di cui sono un fan, purtroppo l'app funziona malissimo, mi ha dato problemi da subito e alla fine ho rinunciato a utilizzarla. Dal mio punto di vista poter sfruttare il "ghiacciaio" di amazon per eventuali disaster recovery avrebbero reso questo NAS un prodotto di livello amatoriale ma con funzioni adatte anche a livelli più professionali. Tuttavia, visto il prezzo che ho pagato, di poco superiore al costo dei singoli WD Red da 4 TB sono veramente molto soddisfatto. Posso consigliarlo a chi cerca un backup semplice ed economico o uno storage da condividere in casa senza particolari problemi. Certamente chi ha necessità più complesse sa già che deve rivolgersi altrove, e pagare qualcosa di più.