Western Digital just released a new Personal Cloud storage device they call the My Cloud. Isnt it just a 3TB network drive Well, yeah it is. WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra Review. What is the WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra The My Cloud EX2 Ultra is a NAS with room for two 3. The WD My Passport vs The Seagate Backup Plus vs The Toshiba Canvio Connect II Which one is bestSynology. It has strong file transfer performance, and is particularly easy to set up and configure to share files across your home network and the internet. Related Best routers to buy. WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra Specifications and design. The NAS is available both with and without hard disks. The diskless version is 1. TB 2. 60, 8. TB 4. TB 5. 30 editions also available. Its a lot, right Its a lot. It is a firehose of news. How are we supposed to live our lives, cook a meal, uncrimp our hunchedover necks Even when I shut my. WD My Cloud is a personal cloud storage unit to organize your photos and videos. Automatically backup and synch files to all your devices. I was sent the 8. TB version to review, which is fitted with two 4. TB WD Red hard disks. Considering these disks would cost around 2. SOFT/WDP/images/ss-wda.jpg' alt='Wd Anywhere Access Software' title='Wd Anywhere Access Software' />NAS, theres no real cost benefit to buying a version with preinstalled disks. Bear in mind that a sensible approach with a two disk NAS is to set it up as a RAID 1 array, where data is mirrored across both disks. This means that if one disk fails you wont lose any data, but you will lose half your available storage capacity. The My Cloud EX2 Ultra is a smart looking NAS with a clean design. Theres nothing on the front, and two USB3 and an Ethernet port on the rear. I would have liked a power button, so I didnt always have to shut it down from the web interface. If you do need to fit or replace disks, its an easy process. A quick button press opens the top of the NAS, you unscrew a bracket and use a plastic tab to pull the disk out. Its not quite as easy a job as with Synologys models, but theres so little in it to make any real difference. Related Best Wi Fi extenders. WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra Setup. Setup is simple. Once the NAS is plugged into your network and switched on, you go to mycloud. The setup application then walks you through choosing a password for the administrator interface and setting up My Cloud accounts, which lets the NAS users access its contents from outside your network. Each of the EX2 Ultras users will need to sign up for their own My Cloud account, which will let them access any shares on the drive to which they have permission. This was the only part of the setup process that gave me trouble, throwing up a couple of unspecified errors when I tried to create multiple My Cloud accounts. This wasnt really a problem, as its simple to set up these accounts later in the NAS web interface. WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra Operating system. If youre used to using NAS devices from manufacturers such as Synology or QNAP, you may find the EX2 Ultras interface a bit of a shock. Instead of something that looks like a desktop operating system with windows and icons, you get tabs and sidebars, a bit like a router interface if at least a particularly clear and friendly one. The Home screen gives you an overview of the NASs status, and usefully splits used storage into categories Movies, Photos, Music and Other so you can see if your holiday snaps are hogging all the space. The Users section makes it easy to add users, configure passwords, set who can access which network shares and assign disk space quotas, while creating and configuring network shares couldnt be easier with the options in the Shares section. Plug in a USB disk FAT, FAT3. NTFS, HFS or EXT234 and it pops up as a network share, without you having to do a thing. When it comes to this kind of basic administration, this is the easiest NAS Ive used. Its far simpler to organise your network shares and assign user privileges than on Synologys operating system, for example. There was one section where I would have liked some more information, however. Out of the box my test NAS had its two drives configured as separate volumes, but its more sensible to set them as RAID 1. This mirrors your data across both drives, so if one dies you wont lose any data. The interface gives you this information, which is useful. However, what it doesnt tell you is that switching to RAID 0 or Spanning is a risky business. These drive modes can give you a speed boost RAID 0 or make both disks appear as a single large drive Spanning, but if one disk breaks you will lose all your data. I would have liked this risk to be spelt out in enormous letters during setup. WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra Apps. The EX2 Ultra may be seriously easy to use, but this comes at the expense of flexibility. Synology and QNAP NAS drives are awash with apps, from mail servers to personal wikis to CCTV, and have software stores to help you add more functions. The EX2 Ultra is much more limited, with Barebones apps for downloading files from HTTP and FTP servers and over Bittorrent, and a very simple file viewer. These work well enough, but dont offer the same desktop application experience youll find with Synologys powerful apps. There is a button to add third party apps, but the selection is pretty minimal just 1. Synologys devices. Heli X Crack Simulator Flight there. One feature thats particularly easy to set up is DLNAUPn. P media streaming. Just turn on media streaming in Settings, then select any of your shares and flick the media streaming switch, and youll be able to access media from that share from a UPn. P client on your network. I had no problem streaming videos to Windows Media Player and VLC on Android, or photos to Bubble. UPn. P. Music files also worked fine, with the usual UPn. P limitation that songs with more than one artist such as Get Lucky by Daft Punk feat. Pharrell Williams will be listed separately from the rest of the album. To fix this I normally need to remove all featured artists from songs. WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra My Cloud. This isnt the first NAS Ive seen to let you access your files from outside your home network, but its certainly the easiest to set up. Each user on the NAS can have their own My Cloud username and password, and once this is set up watch out for the initial setup email ending up in Junk mail you can log in at mycloud. NAS. You can upload files, too. This all works fine, as long as youre aware of the services limitations. There are no fancy extras, such as music streaming, and you cant select multiple files to download at once you have to download the parent folder as a zip file. The photo viewer works well, giving you a thumbnail view and a preview that you can flick through with your keyboards arrow keys. Its a perfectly serviceable way to access your home files from anywhere. You can get more features, such as music streaming, by installing the WD My Cloud app for Windows. WD also provides the My Cloud app for Android and i. OS. This gives you a clean interface to browse folders on your NAS, or you can select Photos, Music or Videos to view only files of that type. Music files will stream over the internet, as will video files if you have a compatible video player installed such as VLC. The app will also upload photos and videos straight to the NAS. Its simple and does the job. WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra Performance. This isnt an expensive NAS, but it is a quick one. In RAID 1 mode, a batch of sub 1. K documents was written at 1. MBs and read at 1. MBs, while a selection of 2 5. MB photos was written at 5. MBs and read at 5. MBs. Finally, a 5. MB film was written at 9. MBs and read at 1. MBs. These speeds put the NAS within 1. Synology DS2. 16, which costs significantly more. Should I buy the WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra If you need a NAS simply to share files on your home network and over the internet, the WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra is hard to beat. I loved its clean interface and the fact that it was so easy to set up users, shares and internet access.