Storage Company Western Digital has taken on Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive with a new personal cloud based service that delivers access to content stored on a home storage system.
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The new service that was launched in Sydney yesterday allows users to store and share content on a home network and then access that content from a portable device anywhere in the world.
The drive costs $199 for 2 terabytes of storage or $269 for 3 terabytes, which sounds expensive until you calculate the cost of a cloud service, which will cost you an additional $50 to $100 a year for similar services.
The WD personal cloud offering also serves as a backup utility, automatically syncing with PC or Mac computers to back up all files.
The box has a faster processor than previous My Drive systems and WD has added a USB expansion port that allow users to increase the storage capacity by simply plugging in another drive or an existing storage device such as a portable 1TB drive.
What has also improved is the software interface and the way in which an attached device can access the home based storage system.
All you have to do is download a mobile app to a smartphone or tablet and you are able to immediately sync those devices to My Cloud and use the files loaded onto the system.
You can add users however the software does not sort files in a structured way similar to iTunes.
My Cloud simply organizes all songs alphabetically by title, without regard to artist or album. What you can do is point your iTunes software to the drive as the source and manage the content from within iTunes.
The storage devices comes in a glossy white box and all you have to do is download the set-up software from the WD website.
Within minutes, it’s up and running however I strongly suggest that you look at a secondary storage system that is located at another location other than your home. My Cloud has only a single drive, which means you need an external backup in case it dies.
