Thinking of getting a NAS

[GrouchyGaijin]

Hi Folks,

I am running Ubuntu 14.04 on two laptops and Xbuntu 14.04 on a third laptop.
I am seriously considering buying a NAS box. Has anyone used the Western Digital My Cloud?
If so, what was your experience? How easy is it to save files from an Ubuntu machine and then access those files remotely over the Internet?
I found this review which does not mention Linux:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/20513...d-storage.html

I did find a couple of posts online that say "The shares can be mounted in Linux either via CIFS (SMB) or NFS.", but I really am not sure what this means.

[pfeiffep]

"Has anyone used the Western Digital My Cloud?"
Earlier this year I purchased a 3 TB Western Digital My Cloud along with a 4 TB Western Digital My Book Studio. I was apprehensive about using commercial cloud services to back up my computers and decided to take it all inside my home. I use the 4TB unit to create safepoints of the data on My Cloud. I used an internet browser to connect to My Cloud's dashboard from an Ubuntu 14.04 installation (WD's software is NOT required).
I have successfully backed up:
2 Ubuntu installs
2 Windows 7 installs
1 Mac Book Pro
I intentionally disabled Internet access from outside my home.

[GrouchyGaijin]

Sounds great - how did you mount the My Cloud from the Ubuntu machine? Did Ubuntu see it on the network automatically and could you transfer files via the file manager or did you need to use FTP?

[Dave_Rove]

I've just got the 3TB version, and I'm really pleased with it. It's small and very power frugal, barely getting warm despite having no fan, and consumes about 4W when the disk spins down when it's not being used. I'm using a CIFS share (a.k.a SMB, the most common NAS share method) which is easy to mount permanently in Ubuntu (Google: Ubuntu CIFS mount), but no doubt you can browse to it via the file-manager's built-in network explorer as a test. (It also has NFS, but I've not bothered with that because I prefer a lack of uid/gid file ownership for NAS files which makes it easy to access from different accounts.)

It runs a full Debian Linux as its OS, so Linux users will want to enable SSH to access it via the command line too.

Edit: It also has a "Cloud Storage" remote access feature where it will backup stuff to a WD server somewhere on the Internet, and you can access that from anywhere apparently, although I've not enabled that. I understand that its downside is that the upload of very large files takes so long that the disk rarely spins down, so I prefer to back it up to a USB3 drive every few weeks. In principle, you could access your NAS from the Internet by setting up port-forwarding in your Internet router but be careful of the security (so use a high-numbered port and Google: port forwarding security risks).

[Bucky Ball]

Thread moved to Ubuntu, Linux and OS Chat.

[GrouchyGaijin]

Thanks Guys,

I think I'm going to buy one. I'm sure you will hear back from me if I have problems.

[howefield]

I bought the 2TB version to replace its predecessor, an 8 year old My Book Live. Both are great drives and are cool and quiet.

As Dave_Rove mentioned above, accessing files is easy enough via the (U)buntu file manager or mount permanently in fstab and the web interface to administer the drives settings doesn't care what operating system you are on.

[GrouchyGaijin]

That is definitely good news. Have you guys been able to share files with people not on the same wi-fi network?
Basically, I live in Sweden and want to share stuff with family in the US. I've been using Dropbox, but would like to ween myself off of services like that.

[Lars Noodén]

If you can forward an outside port to your NAS and it supports SSH (and thus SFTP) then you can access it from anywhere in the world. There are dedicated graphical clients like CyberDuck, WinSCP, and FileZilla, but the regular run of the mill file managers like Nautilus support SFTP, too. You might just want to have a dynamic DNS hostname so that you can find the machine regularly, if your ISP does not give you a static IP.

[andrew.robbins.fli]

I have been using the WD My cloud device and it works really well. The webclient is used to setup shares and sharers as they call directories and users, and the PC app is used to view/edit/save/download your files. FTP is fast and works well, and filezilla works like a charm with WD mycloud.