Western Digital My Cloud or a DIY NAS?

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eday_2010

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Apr 27, 2012
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Today I learned about the Western Digital My Cloud. It seems like an excellent, if a bit pricey, to setting up a NAS without any hassle. Plug it into the router, install the drive, and off you go.

Considering the price of it ($150 for 3TB, $180 for 3TB, $250 for 4TB), and the price of building my own with something like a D-Link 2-bay NAS Enclosure for $120 plus hard drives, what is the benefit of building my own apart from more storage?

Right now my "network" files are on my desktop computer with most of its folders shared, but I cannot always reliably connect to it either because of Windows or because of my wireless router (everything, including my desktop, is wireless).

I've been thinking about getting a NAS for a while, but I don't know that much about them, and for the most part they seem like a somewhat pricey endeavor. The My Cloud has gotten me thinking about it seriously again.
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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Sep 17, 2012
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The thing about a NAS is 1) You have more control over the settings. In this case you have 4 Raid settings. Probably JBOD (Just a bunch of disk) Raid 0, 1 and probably either 0+1 or raid 10. The My Cloud has no Raid.

In my case I have 2 2TB in raid 0 so it looks like one big 4TB hard drive. I also have a single 4TB hard that i use as a backup of that 4 TB raid 0. Now if your My Could Hard drive takes a dump. You'll probably have to send it in to get any data off of it.

If you get the DLINK NAS and then get like 2 2,3 or 4 TB hard drive or a match pair or hard drives you can do a Raid 1 or a Mirror so if one drive fails the other drive kicks i because its an exact copy. But if you use two 4TB hard drives you still only have 4TB of space. Not 8TB of space. that would be a raid 0 but if you lose a hard drive your SOL on that one.

In my case I'd go with the DLink Nas and do a Raid 1 if your going to be storing valuable files. this way you already have a backup handy. But if you plan on just having what ever like if you lose it you don't care then just go with the cheaper WD My Could option.
 
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eday_2010

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Apr 27, 2012
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I wouldn't be storing anything important. It would pretty much be only home movies, TV shows, music and movies; basically a media server, with some jointly used Excel files as well most likely. And I would still have copies of everything on older hard drives sitting in my desk. But I have a lot of stuff. I am not sure even the 4TB My Cloud would be able to hold it all. So that is something I need to consider as well. The ease of the My Cloud is really appealing, but the amount of space a DIY NAS can give me is equally appealing.
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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Yea the MyCloud def easier to setup. The DLink NAS though will only give you 8TB in a Raid 0 since 4TB driver are as big as they get and those are like 250 for the cheap ones up to 500. But its up to you. Honestly if i got the NAS i'd be more worried about data loss to i'd use a Raid 1 but again. thats just me. If i love my 4TB drive My life would be like...Gone...XD
 
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drtweak

drtweak

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Sep 17, 2012
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Just read the Toms Hardware article on the MyCloud. It has a USB 3.0 to attach additional storage for the future. So yea if your not too worried about having data on there that you can't live without i'd go for that since you can just get a 4TB or what ever side you want in a USB 3.0 enclosure and just add it on!
 
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eday_2010

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Apr 27, 2012
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I'll check the article out. If an added drive shows up as more drive space instead of another drive letter, that is great. I'll have to take an inventory of everything I would want to store on the NAS and figure out how much space I initially need, plus space for additional stuff.
 
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dsporcic

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With these single drive NAS solutions, BTSync is a good option to backup the contents as well across the network to another drive. Should be doable. This sync option differs from a scheduled backup and will keep your drives busier but so does raid. Just a thought.
 
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eday_2010

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Apr 27, 2012
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I won't be using it as backup. It will be strictly a media server with a few Office files that both my wife and I use.

As I keep waiting for the 4TB My Cloud to be released, I keep looking at other solutions. One would be to get the D-Link ShareCenter 2-bay enclosure, and use two drives in it as RAID0. Pricier, but in the long term maybe better as I could put 8TB in there and have it show up as one drive. I still haven't found out is attaching another external HDD to the My Cloud extends the first drive or has it show as a second drive.
 
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