Accessing external hard drives wirelessly on laptop (without going through desktop)

lishaohua · Mar 17, 2016

I've only ever had a desktop PC, and I've connected external hard drives to that desktop for extra storage. I had a laptop for a short time a while back (I returned it because it had problems and never got around to getting another one), and I was able to access those external hard drives through the desktop - but only while the desktop was turned on. I'm looking to get a laptop once again, but this time I would like to be able to access those drives without needing the desktop to be on all the time, or without needing the desktop at all - if I decide I don't need it in the future and get rid of it.

I saw in another thread here - where someone had a similar question - that you can connect a hard drive to the router via the USB port on the router, if it has a USB port. I just looked at my router (NVG589) and it does indeed have a USB port (presumably I could use a USB splitter for multiple hard drives). There was mention, however, of possible security issues doing this.

Are there other ways to do this? I've tried to research this, but I got a bit confused with the different options and terms - i.e., personal cloud, network attached storage - what they entail and what the differences are. Can anyone tell me what I need to get/do in order to set this up? Thank you very much.

firefoxx04 · Mar 17, 2016

I would just connect the drives to the desktop and set them up as a share. Map the drives locally on the laptop. This way they just show up in 'My Computer' without you doing any tricks. The desktop would act as a file server. The downside is that you would probably require 100% uptime on the desktop in order for this to be convenient. Most of us build a low power home file server for these tasks.

Adding to the router is fine but I would also be weary of security unless you are running Tomato or Open DDWRT.

Boogieman_WD · Mar 17, 2016

Hey there, lishaohua.

Well there seem to be to general options in your case and are the ones you've already mentioned.

Getting an external drive for your router is a nice way to be able to access it without directly attaching it anytime you want to access it. It's more budget friendly than a NAS. However, if you decide to go with that option, you should make sure that your router model is fully compatible and does not have any issues with the drive model you're planning to get (I'm talking about power issues, supported capacit, etc). As for USB splitter, I guess you're talking about a USB HUB. If the router is able to recognize several drive connected to it via a USB HUB, the HUB itself should definitely be externally powered, as some routers have issues powering up even some portable drives.

On the other hand, getting a NAS enclosure is another option. You'd most likely be able to have larger storage capacity. It would be easier to access it, backup information from all devices (via mobile and computer apps). Use different features/apss to stream content to your devices, etc.
This is just an example you could take a look at: WD My Cloud. You can compare them here or click on each of the devices and check their individual features.

Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Boogieman_WD

jsmithepa · Mar 17, 2016

Do not assume your router's USB port can he HD'ed, READ THE MANUAL, it may not let you hook up a USB hub. Through-router is inexpensive but has limitations, as Boobleman says, make sure it's compatible. Yes sorry, not plug&play without dully researched.

If money is no object, Western Digital and other sell these "cloud" thingies and with those, minimum thinking.

lishaohua · Mar 17, 2016

firefoxx04 :

Thanks for responding, firefoxx04, but the main point is that I want to be able to access the drives without having the desktop on all the time.

Boogieman_WD :

Hi, Boogieman_WD. Actually, I was just looking at the WD MyCloud at Amazon. I got a bit confused and concerned, however, when someone in the Answered Questions section mentioned that it takes 20 minutes to save a 4 GB video onto MyCloud.com. I had thought that files would be directly saved onto and accessed from the device itself, but it seemed that some were saying that you had to go through MyCloud.com and that makes it take longer. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. Perhaps you could explain this.

jsmithepa :

Thanks, jsmithepa, for the word of warning. I don't think I will try that option now, especially with the security issues that would result.

Boogieman_WD · Mar 17, 2016

lishaohua :

Well, there are plenty of options you can use to backup your data. You can use the desktop My Cloud app, which has a really nice and user friendly interface. There's no need for you to go to mycloud.com to backup data. You can use WD Smartware for scheduled backups. You can enable FTP from the Cloud's dashboard, which will allow you to enable it for some of (or all) the folders and thus you'll be able to map them to your computer and access them as regular folders or an external drive and just copy-paste data.

As for mobile devices there's an app for them as well, which can be set to upload all your videos and photos as soon as you make them or wait for a Wi-Fi connection in order not to be charged by your service carrier. This type of backup depends on your current upload speed and your download speed (at home). However, when you are at home and connected to the same network as your Cloud, the speed should be a lot faster as you'd be using your internal network. This still depends on the router and the connection of your computer (Wi-Fi or via ethernet cable).

I've just performed a test with one of our My Cloud Mirror (Generation 2) NAS devices and uploaded a single 4.5GB file. It took about 3 min and a half, but the computer has a direct connection (via an ethernet cables) and the router has speeds of up to 1Gbps.

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any other questions.

lishaohua · Mar 17, 2016

Boogieman_WD :

Thanks for replying again, Boogieman_WD. So what you're saying is that when using it at home, it should be much faster, and I don't need to go through MyCloud.com? Back to my original question though, I was wanting to be able to access my existing external hard drives without going through the desktop and having to have the desktop turned on all the time - as firefoxx04 alluded to. I saw that there was a USB port on the MyCloud, and that in the Answered Questions section at Amazon, some people mentioned that you could connect an external hard drive to it via that USB port... or use a USB hub/splitter if you have multiple external hard drives that you want to connect to it. Is that true?

Also, what are the differences between the various MyCloud models? I see that the MyCloud Mirror allows for making two copies, which I don't need. I also saw the EX2 Ultra, which appears to be more expensive and advanced (and the EX4100, which appears to be even more advanced). Can you tell me what the EX2 Ultra has that the basic MyCloud doesn't?

Finally, could you explain to me what the difference between the terms "personal cloud" and "network attached storage"? It seems like at some points those are used interchangeably, yet in some places I've seen them defined a bit differently. I hope I'm not asking too many questions of you. I really appreciate your assistance.

Boogieman_WD · Mar 18, 2016

No worries at all. It's better to ask questions than to get something you don't need/want or something that you don't understand.

So, about the transfer speed of a NAS, this goes for all NAS devices. The speed depends not only on the enclosure's hardware configuration - CPU, RAM, etc. but it also depends on your router and the type of connection (as mentioned in my previous post). It will definitely be faster when you are at home as your devices would both be connected to the same network. On the other hand, if you are on a holiday for example and you make a video on your phone, if your upload speed is 10Mbps, your transfer will be limited to that speed so this may vary. You don't need to log in mycloud.com to transfer data, you can just use the desktop app for that or as already mentioned, you can set it up as an FTP (supported by My Cloud Mirror, but not My Cloud) and access it like a folder which appears in Windows Explorer (My Computer, This PC).

Just because I've already mentioned "all NAS devices" I'm going to jump to your last question real quick. Personal Clouds are NAS devices. NAS stands for Network-attached storage. The other type is a DAS (Direct-attached storage). E.g. a hard drive connected to your computer is a DAS, but if you take that drive and connect it to your router so that it's accessible for the whole network at home (or via the internet) it becomes a NAS. So all the storage connected to your network is called NAS.

As for your question about the USB port/s. My Cloud devices have USB 3.0 ports (2 for My Cloud Mirror and 1 for My Cloud). You are right, you can connect either a USB hub or a docking station and expand the storage capacity of your NAS device. You can use them to backup your cloud or simply as additional storage space. When you connect a drive you'd have to wait for about a minute, refresh the app and it will pop-up as a storage location.

As for the differences between those models, here it goes:
Basically you can see the differences between My Cloud and My Cloud Mirror here: My Cloud vs My Cloud Mirror. You've mentioned that you don't need a copy of the same disk, which is OK as My Cloud Mirror supports RAID 0 and RAID 1 (Mirror). RAID 0 allows you to use the 2 drives inside as a single big drive e.g. if you have 2x 6TB WD Red drives, you can configure them as a single 12TB volume. It also has the option for JBOD (just a bunch of drives) where you use each HDD as a separate drive (like you probably would in your computer if you had more than one drive). You can't do that with a My Cloud enclosure as it has only one drive inside. My Cloud Mirror has 2 USB 3.0 ports compared to a single USB 3.0 port for My Cloud. My Cloud Mirror also supports the following serving options: File server, FTP server, Backup server, P2P download.

As for the differences between My Cloud and My Cloud EX2 Ultra - First, My Cloud EX2 is from the expert series NAS devices. This means that it has additional features which a regular user wouldn't need most probably. I'm talking about features, such as: iSCSI, volume virtualization, iPv4/iPv6 and Active Directory. It's also DLNA 1.5 & UPnP certified for media streaming and it has 1GB RAM compared to My Cloud Mirror's 512MB RAM. My Cloud EX2 Ultra's processor is also a newer version, which performs better with multitasking (e.g. streaming while backing up).

From what I understand you won't need that kind of stuff, so you'd be OK with either My Cloud, or My Cloud Mirror.

As already mentioned, please don't hesitate to ask about anything that comes to mind.

lishaohua · Mar 18, 2016

Boogieman_WD :

Thanks again for patiently explaining all this, Boogieman_WD.

First, I just wanted to let you know that when I click on your links, nothing comes up - I have to go and edit the URL manually so that all the referral "junk" is taken out... before it works. That's no problem for me, but I wanted to let you know in case other people might also have the same problem (I'm not sure if it's something to do with my uBlock, Ghostery, or NoScript add-ons in Firefox).

As for my choices, I can rule out the EX2 Ultra, as from what you said, I don't need those advanced features. Now for choosing between the My Cloud and My Cloud Mirror. I see on the webpage you gave me that the My Cloud Mirror has "Integrated serving options" of File server, FTP server, Backup server, and P2P download - that My Cloud does not. Can you explain a bit what that means? You mentioned in particular that the My Cloud Mirror could be set up as an FTP and accessed like a folder appearing in Windows Explorer - thereby not requiring me to go through MyCloud.com - so does this mean that using My Cloud, I would have to go through MyCloud.com, or is there some way to do it in My Cloud without using the FTP capability that only the My Cloud Mirror has? I apologize, but I'm still a bit confused on this. (One thing I should also mention is that I will only be needing to use this at home, so I'm hoping that would mean that I would not need to use MyCloud.com at all and would only access the storage via the home network, which should be much faster, from what you've said.)

The other difference I see on that webpage is that under "Disk Management", there's nothing for the My Cloud, but for My Cloud Mirror it says "RAID 0,1; JBOD & spanning". I know you briefly mentioned JBOD being "just a bunch of disks", but I'm not sure I get what it means precisely. Pardon my lack of familiarity with this subject, but could you explain what it means and how it differs from RAID? I tried to look it up, and I found this on another thread in this board:

RAID 0 stripes the data across the disks to gain a performance improvement. JBOD just tacks one disk onto the end of another without striping. There's minimal performance improvement, the only significant gain is that you have one big volume instead of a bunch of little ones.

but I'm not sure what is meant by "stripes" or "striping". You said that "RAID 0 allows you to use the 2 drives as a single big drive", but then you mentioned that JBOD allows you to use each drive as a separate drive. That means that, with the 6 TB drives that you used, for example, in RAID 0 it would be one 12 TB drive and show up as, say, E: - but in JBOD, it would be like having two separate 6 TB drives and show up as, say, E: and F: - is that correct? The difference being, for example, if you've used up 5.99 TB of one drive using JBOD and you want to store a 0.02 TB file (for simplicity's sake, ignoring the fact that all drives have a capacity less than the actual number given, and assuming the capacity is actually 6 TB), you would have to save it on the 2nd drive... but using RAID 0, it all acts as one 12 TB drive, so there would be no distinctions between drives and you could save 12 TB without worrying about fitting 6 TB on one drive and 6 TB on the other. Am I understanding that correctly?

Finally, I was wondering about security. Is there any danger of the network being accessible to others in close enough proximity to pick up on my home network? I know it's different from directly connecting the hard drive(s) to the router, which others in this thread have warned me is unsafe, but since the My Cloud is still being attached to the router, wouldn't it still have that potential problem?

Thanks again for all your explanations. I'm glad to see that "official representatives" such as yourself are here in this forum answering questions for people who need to figure out what they need, or just to try to understand better how things work. (For what it's worth, if I come to the conclusion that either the My Cloud or My Cloud Mirror is the answer for what I want, it's very likely that I will go ahead and go for it and not shop/look around any more than I already have.)

Boogieman_WD · Mar 21, 2016

Hey again. Sorry, but I've made one mistake by saying that My Cloud does not support FTP, so it can be set-up as an FTP server. However, you don't really need to do that. Both My Cloud and My Cloud Mirror can be found on your network and mapped as a network location to your Windows Explorer (there's a step-by-step guide on how to do that in the manual). So you'd be perfectly fine if you decide to go with a My Cloud instead of My Cloud Mirror. In either way, you won't need to use mycloud.com to transfer your data. You can either do it via the WD My Cloud Desktop app or the mapped network location. http://setup.wd2go.com/?mod=download&device=mc you can find the software associated with My Cloud here: http://setup.wd2go.com/?mod=download&device=mc (I won't shorten the links as you've mentioned you've been having issues with them). Actually the whole site is really useful to new My Cloud users http://setup.wd2go.com/?mod=product&device=mc. You can find tutorials on how to setup your device, along with a lot more how-to guides which might prove useful.

As for your questions about RAID 0 (stripped) setup uses both drives performance. It basically strips the data along both drives which leads to a lot faster performance, but it lacks redundancy. E.g. if you decide to upload a video file it would be stripped along both drives, which means that if either of those drives fails at some point - your data will be lost.
RAID 1 (Mirror) with the same example means writing slower by using the performance of each drive individually, but the same video is copied over to the 2nd drive as well. This way in case a drive fails, you'd still have the data on the 2nd drive and you'd be able to recover it.
JBOD is basically either 2 spanned drives which is again a single logical partition e.g. 6TB drive being read as a 12TB (basically spanning the storage capacity and again, you lose all your data if one drive failes) drive or as 2 separate 6TB HDDs. Both Spanning and JBOD are supported by My Cloud Mirror.

About the security - even if someone manages to access your home network somehow, there are log-in passwords for both the WD App and the Dashboard (from where you monitor and configure your cloud). Without those no files or settings will be accessible to anyone.

Please let me know if I've missed something or if you need more info on anything in particular. Once again, sorry for the mistake about the FTP. Again, with both WD My Cloud devices, you'd have still 2 more options to transfer data besides mycloud.com.

lishaohua · Mar 22, 2016

Boogieman_WD :

I see that you added the extra paragraph or two to answer my question on the security issue. Thanks for doing that. I also see that I don't quite understand how these things work and the meaning of the various terms, but your answers have helped to clear things up a bit for me. And thanks for telling me about your previous error with the ftp option being available in My Cloud. I guess the only question I have left is whether there's anything that I would need in the My Cloud Mirror that the My Cloud doesn't have. Since you said that I don't really need to use ftp anyway, that it would be shown and available on the network without using ftp, I'm not sure if there's any particular reason I would need the My Cloud Mirror over the My Cloud. Like I mentioned in my original question, I will want to attach external hard disk drives to it via the USB port, and using a USB hub, so that I can access all of them at home from laptop. I'm sorry if I'm repeating the same question and not quite understanding how these things work, but all I need to know now is whether there's anything in the My Cloud Mirror I would need, that the My Cloud doesn't have.

Boogieman_WD · Mar 22, 2016

Yeah, I knew I might have forgotten something so today I went back and checked and it turned out that this was the case. I thought you haven't seen it yet, otherwise it would've been a completely different post or with an edit note. Anyway, the important thing is that you've seen it.
I don't really think that there's anything that WD My Cloud Mirror has and that you might miss on the WD My Cloud, having in mind the purpose you want to use it for. However I do feel that you should know that I've tested My Cloud and My Cloud Mirror with a USB splitter, a docking station and an externally powder USB HUB and the bottom line is this: you might have trouble with some of those devices, causing My Cloud not to be able to recognize more than 1 drive connected at once and My Cloud Mirror - more than 2 drives connected at the same time. The tests were performed with 2x 2TB WD Passport drives and one 1TB WD Elements Portable drive.

lishaohua · Mar 25, 2016

Boogieman_WD :

Oh, I'm really glad you mentioned that. You said "might", so I suppose it's worth a try, and I can always return it if I get it through Amazon. Is there something else that is definitely suited for the purpose I'm looking for? It seems like there should be such a device for this purpose. If My Cloud doesn't work, what else could possibly do the trick?

EDIT: I looked at the Questions & Answers at the Amazon page for My Cloud, and saw some conflicting answers on whether it was possible to attach a USB hub and then attach multiple hard drives to that hub. Actually, I think most people said the answer was "no". I think one person in particular said that it was supposed to be possible according to the manual("...You can attach a powered USB hub to the external USB port and attach up to seven USB devices to the hub....", page 106), but that he/she tried it and was unsuccessful. Then, I did a search and found a YouTube video for My Cloud, specifically talking about the possibility of attaching a USB hub and multiple hard drives - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmYi2oPYr3Y - and he seems to confirm (with demonstrated proof) that it is indeed possible to do so. He showed his screen and all the eight (!) drives he attached to the hub did indeed show up and were all available. I also saw at least one commenter at that YouTube page say that he was also successful in doing so (he attached four drives to a four-port USB hub). Therefore, I think it's worth a try for me... like I said, I can always return it if it doesn't work. The guy who made the YouTube video did mention that you have to make sure to use a self-powered USB hub - there were several commenters who were unsuccessful and he told them to make sure they're using a self-powered hub, so perhaps that is why so may people have said they were unable to get it to work... because they were using normal unpowered hubs instead of using self-powered hubs. He also said that it "kind of slowed down the web interface" when he tried it with eight drives (he talks about this at 1:20 in the YouTube video), which makes me wonder if perhaps it would not "slow down" as much with a My Cloud Mirror with four drives connected to each of two USB hubs, instead of all eight on one hub on the My Cloud since it only has the one USB port.

Also, I was wanting to ask you about the low rating and some of the negative reviews and comments at the Amazon page for My Cloud - but I thought perhaps you wouldn't really be able to answer it, or answer it in a forthcoming manner, with your employment at Western Digital and all. I'm just wondering why there seem to be many people saying that this product "doesn't work" straight out of the box... as well as some other (very) negative comments and reviews. If you're not really allowed to talk about that, it's fine... you can just tell me so.

Boogieman_WD · Apr 6, 2016

Hey again.

Well you've determined that My Cloud will suit you best in terms of budget and what it has to offer and we've discussed higher class products as well, which you decided (and correctly in my opinion) that you won't need what they have to offer having in mind the purpose you need the NAS for. So basically I'd say that either My Cloud or My Cloud Mirror is the correct choice for you. Unfortunately I can't guarantee that all externally powered hubs will work fine as there might be incompatibility issues as you can see. You could get one of those recommended in the video you've watched in order to connect more external drives.

About the negative reviews. With electronic and mechanical devices there will always be some that will fail sooner rather than later, but after all, that's what the warranty is for. We have 1x My Cloud and 2x My Cloud Mirror (1st and 2nd generations) in the office and I have one My Cloud Mirror (1st gen) at home and never had a single issue with any of them up until now. Other than that in my experience people have always been more likely to leave negative comments (which is somewhat natural) if something is not OK, rather than leave a positive comment if everything is working exactly as it should. Regardless, all comments and reviews are a positive thing overall, as this is important feedback for the future development of our products and devices.

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