WD® Gives Consumers A Cloud Of Their Own

WD now offers its new My Cloud™ family of personal cloud solutions. The goal is to say goodbye to the hot mess of scattered photos, videos, songs, personal and business files strewn across your different devices. You think your digital files are chaotic now?

Well, research firm Gartner predicts the average household will own approximately 3.3 terabytes (TB) of digital content by 2016. It’s not a far-fetched estimate. Many American households have 6 or more connected devices already, and it seems we love adding more and more. With so many different machines under one roof, a personal cloud is the simple solution that just plain makes sense.

WD says My Cloud allows any person to secure files from different computers and mobile devices and then have access to those files from any device, from anywhere in the world. And not only can you store all your files, but the My Cloud desktop app allows you to organize them with simple and intuitive navigation. Tame the chaos, centralize, get organized - Sounds good to me!  By simply connecting a My Cloud personal cloud drive to the internet, consumers get the same convenience of “anywhere access” as they would from a public cloud, without having to pay monthly fees or giving up control of their personal data.   “We believe that there’s no place like home for the cloud,” said WD exec Jim Welsh.

Easy Setup  

WD says customers can get their personal cloud up and running in minutes with WD’s rich web-based user interface for seamless web-guided setup. The setup interface auto-detects the drive to make it all simple, even for novice users. Once the My Cloud drive is setup, customers can easily connect their computers and mobile devices with WD's free desktop and mobile apps. With a Gigabit Ethernet connection and Dual-Core processor, transferring files is blazing fast. Direct uploads to My Cloud means valuable space is freed up on users’ computing devices.

Stress-Free Cloud Access and Big Savings Over the Long Run  

The My Cloud mobile app integrates with major public cloud services so that customers can easily transfer files between their Dropbox™, SkyDrive® and Google Drive™ accounts. Since we’re discussing popular clouds like Dropbox and Google Drive, now’s a good time to do a quick comparison and point out the money-saving aspect of WD My Cloud. Take a look at this price comparison chart.

Sizes, Prices, Availability dates; And even more ways to use My Cloud

Available for iOS® and Android™ devices, the WD My Cloud mobile app also makes file sharing and collaborating simple and secure, allowing customers to easily email files, share files as a link, and print and open files with third party apps. Additionally, My Cloud can serve as a home’s digital entertainment hub, storing terabytes of movies and music that can then be streamed to any DLNA™-certified multimedia device such as a WD TV® Live™ media player, as well as smart TVs and gaming consoles.  Customers can also use their My Cloud to back up their computers and digital files - this can be done on a schedule, if someone chooses.

For PC users, WD SmartWare™ Pro software offers options for how, when and where to back up files. Mac users can utilize all the features of Apple® Time Machine® backup software to protect their data.  My Cloud personal cloud storage is available in capacities of 2 TB, 3 TB and 4 TB and is compatible with Windows® 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista®, Windows XP, OS X Mountain Lion™, Lion®, Snow Leopard®, as well as DLNA®/UPnP® enabled devices.   Customers can also attach a compatible USB 3.0 hard drive directly to the USB expansion port on the My Cloud drive and instantly expand their storage capacity.

The 2 TB and 3 TB My Cloud is currently available at select U.S. retailers and online at the wdstore.com. The 4 TB My Cloud is expected to be available in November. MSRP is $149.99 USD for 2 TB, $179.99 USD for 3 TB and $249.99 USD for 4 TB. The My Cloud mobile app currently is available for download from the App StoreSM and Google PlayTM.

I met recording artist Mikel Paris of O.A.R. during the WD My Cloud press preview in September, where he explained how he uses WD products for work. This is what he said. “I was extremely mediocre at backing up my files in the past. Before the summer tour, however, I decided to be better and started backing up my files everyday after major work sessions. I was working on pretty big projects, including videos, some bigger than 8GB.

Having really reliable storage and the ability to share these large files has been really valuable. For my latest projects I again worked with large files, pro tools and GarageBand, so I needed a really good way to share these large files with my mix engineer, who lives in Nashville. When I met him to produce the sessions, he was able to have the tracks up and running for me. I was able to do this with my WD network drive and it worked pretty seamlessly. I’m really excited to see how the WD My Cloud makes this process even easier.”

Closing thoughts

Personal cloud storage is the new standard, allowing users to keep media and files safe at home on their own physical drive and then access them over the Internet with any PC or Mac® computer or on tablets and smartphones through mobile apps. Using the My Cloud drive, WD says users can share files, stream media and access content anywhere and feel secure in the knowledge that their cloud resides in their own home under their exclusive control. The best part?  No monthly fees. It seems the unit practically pays for itself.   For more information, go to: http://www.wd.com/mycloud   

About WD

WD®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company, is a world leader in storage solutions. WD is a long-time innovator and storage technology pacesetter. WD produces reliable, high-performance hard disk drives and solid state drives. These drives are deployed by OEMs and integrators in desktop and mobile computers, enterprise computing systems, embedded systems and consumer electronics applications, as well as by the company in providing its own storage products. WD’s leading storage devices and systems, networking products, media players and software solutions empower people around the world to easily save, store, protect, share and experience their content on multiple devices. WD was established in 1970 and is headquartered in Irvine, California.

Author bio:

Alex H Yong writes reviews on popular smartphones, tablets, cloud services, and other tech topics for his blog, TechMania411.net. He is a fan of Android and likes cats, comedy, corn on the cob, and clarity most of all. Originally from the island nation of Singapore, he now calls New York City home.