Have you seen the brilliant new My Cloud Home external drive from WD? It’s a whopping 2TB (minimum) of your very own personal storage cloud, and may possibly be the very best gift you can give your family this coming year.
Lots of us use ‘the cloud’ to store our digital lives these days – it’s just easier, and far far easier to have your phone remember to back things up for you. You DO back up your phone, yes? Yes. Good.
*waits while you scurry off and hot ‘back up’ on your phone*
*welcome back*
A friend of mine recently tried to pass her old iPhone on to her son – and realised she had over 5,000 images that needed clearing off first. FIVE THOUSAND! Yikes.
There are lots of cloud options to choose form these days, of course – Google, Apple, your INternet provider, they’ll all provide you a little bit of cyberspace to store your treasures. But if I’m honest, I do feel safer where I can see them, and control who gets to them. Which is why I’m a bit in love with WD’s ‘My Cloud’ drive – it’s an actual, real drive that you plug in at home. And it operates like your very own personal cloud to store all those essential files on.
Unlike public clouds, My Cloud personal cloud storage allows you to keep all your content in one safe place on your home network – there’s no mystery about where your data is located, and of course there’s no monthly fees for those whopping Terabytes of space.
And the whole family can use it – this isn’t a back up drive just for one person on their computer. No no no. It sits happily near the hub and waits for you all to access it; backing up and organising all your family’s photos, videos and music in one secure place, and seamlessly stream them to all of your devices.
It’s a smart looking addition to a shelf too – not ugly and techy-looking like my usual external drives, but surprisingly more like a neat storage file (which I guess isn’t all that surprising, being as it’s… um… a digital storage file…). On the back is just one Ethernet port, plus a USB 3.0 port (so you can back up direct from memory sticks etc), and the power inlet for the small wall-socket-mounted PSU that comes in the box with it.? That’s it. Because this isn’t something you plug into. It’s all about your Wi-Fi.
So you plug it into your hub, install the app on your phone – and you’re good to go!
And you do everything via a website, which then sends the commands back to the box in your home. It’s so easy – just use the My Cloud Home mobile app, the desktop app or just go to MyCloud.com to upload, access and share your favourite memories and stream videos saved on your My Cloud Home device anywhere you have an internet connection.
The minimalist design doesn’t even include an on/off button (because you don’t turn it off, see – it just sits and works permanently for you, ever at your disposal) and the only sign it’s on and working is a small strip of light across the front.
There’s also automatic backup for tablets & smartphones
Most of those stupidly irreplaceable, massively cherished photos that you grab are on your mobile devices, aren’t they? It always seems to be your phone that’s at hand when your child does something amazing, stupid or hilarious – the resulting shots might be a bit out of focus, chopping the odd limb off or come out in a weird orangey glow. But it doesn’t matter; every time you look at it you glow and grin and remember. And that makes it irreplaceable.
And the My Cloud Home mobile app is a little touch of genius which will genuinely help keep those irreplaceable moments protected – with automatic backup to your personal cloud storage as you take them.
You can of course use the My Cloud Home as your main storage device – but then please don’t forget that then IT will need backing up. You always need a second copy of everything, sitting safely somewhere.
You can buy the My Cloud Home on Amazon, and the 2TB version is currently under £120!
(And don’t forget that Day 21 of the #LittleStuff24 is your chance to win a My Cloud Home.)
