[NewsPoster]

Western Digital is attempting to reinvent the network-attached storage (NAS) concept with its new My Cloud device. The external storage aims to eliminate all of the network complications while expanding the available features. In our full review, we try to determine if the company has succeeded in simplification without too much sacrifice.

[Inkling]

Just be advised that an NAS drive is a risky beast to manage. I used a WD My Cloud drive for Time Machine backup and the initial installation went well. But after a move cross-country, it quite working. Even with exactly the same hardware configured exactly the same way, it refused to work. And from what I could read about the cryptic error message I was getting, the problem is a common one and wouldn't be an easy fix.

If I'd had a USB drive instead, that wouldn't be a problem. So my advice is that, unless you need the drive to be kept too distant for USB to work or you need to back up multiple computers to one drive, don't go with NAS. The risks outweigh the benefits.

[Geoduck]

I had a My Cloud drive and found it to be unreliable. The HDD was fine, I ended up pulling it out and putting it in a USB external drive. But the NAS part was unstable, I just couldn't trust it. I use QNAP NAS devices at work, we have two, and friends of mine have DROBO NAS devices at hime. They're great. Stable and reliable. The WD unit though is not.