MY CLOUD EX2 ULTRA REVIEW

I would not say this because I am a food blogger, but as someone who loves food and taking pictures of them, it's pretty common for me, especially my laptop to face this problem: HARD DISK MEMORY ISSUE.

So my laptop has an internal memory of 500GB (upgraded from the lame default 200GB), and I believe you know that 500GB is not a fix 500GB, and to make matters *ahem* worse, the original 400 something GB is definitely not dedicated for your pictures and music, pretty much like perfume, when they say it's 100ml, it's NOT precisely 100ml, or your own mobile phone!

Your own OS itself already cost you a few gigabytes, and if you have more apps on your computer that you store and install on certain harddisk, they will take away your quota and that means less and less amount of memory you're entitled to!

I have a confession to make, I came tp realize that all the pictures I took circa 2012 has reached an interesting yet shocking amount of memory cost: MORE THAN 4 FREAKING TERABYTES! I already had three external hard disks and it's still not enough. I have this thing where I will never delete my pictures (except those that don't really matter), believe me I have tried deleting most pictures to give more life (space) to my computer and that cost me 8 hours alone. Not again!

So long story short, I got recommended to try this external hard disk, as well as a personal cloud by WD. I have been an avid fan of WD, I might be the least caring when it comes to technology as I ordered my external harddisk from my cousin (who runs a computer store in Mangga Dua) and I only remember asking him to give me the best or recommended one and he said this was the best. I notice it's indeed pretty good and performs quite fast on the data transfer, and since then I have been loving their stuff!

It has been a year since My Cloud EX2 was launched to the public and this time they came with something promised to give something more “ultra”: My Cloud EX2 Ultra.

My Cloud EX2 Ultra came with these following specs:
- 1.3 GHz dual-core processor
- 1 GB memory
- 4TB data storage

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
- Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 or Windows Vista
- Mac OS Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion
- DLNA/UpnP devices for streaming
- Router with Internet connection

SUPPORTED BROWSERS:
- Microsoft Edge
- Internet Explorer 10 or higher
- Safari 6 or higher
- Firefox 30 or higher
- Google Chrome 31.0 or higher on supoorted Windows and Mac OS platforms

UNBOXING MY CLOUD EX2 ULTRA
First of all, what I am going to say is so irrelevant, but boy do I love the smell of a new gadget, you know they have this signature smell of when the styrofoams meets the carton box? Ok you don’t? Nevermind.

Inside the blue carton box you’ll find one (1) Pre-configured Network Accessible Storage (NAS), another box consisting of one (1) ethernet cable, one (1) power supply, and a quick install guide. Talk about the installation, it’s basically just ABC easy, all you need to do is to connect the connect the NAS to your Internet router via ethernet cable and of course plug in the power supply to turn it on. Mentioned earlier that the data storange and sharing of My Cloud EX2 Ultra is working through WiFi connection.

REVIEW
OK so let me tell you guys briefly how does this thing work, but first, make sure everything’s connected to the internet and power supply, and for that smooth start along the way, you’ll required to make an account on mycloud.com/setup, just a simple one which you can just log in and log out with, and basically to notice any updates on the My Cloud EX2 Ultra, or do basic configurations.

Internet App – 192.168.xxx should be the general IP code.

I just got this product like very-very recently, and the first time that I actually used this was to transfer all of my Australia trip pictures, which by the way is 56 Gigabytes in total, I did count and it cost me just around 30 minutes to transfer the whole thing (and I did count), well that was kinda fast, considering I normally needed 45 minutes-1 hour just to transfer 20 Gigabytes files on the WD My Passport.

I do recommend Windows user to just go via “Start” button -> “computer” and head to the “networking” tab and transfer your files there, instead of transferring it via the WD My Cloud app, if you’re a Mac user, you can access via “finder”.

You also need to know that My Cloud EX2 Ultra offers four main configurations options such as: RAID, Disk Status, iSCSI, AND Volume Virtual, in which some of them has their own sub-menus. I’ll let you through all this briefly, I am not a technologist, so I am explaining it to you by my rapid experience with this hahaha!

RAID
Go to the Set-up Raid for configuration, inside you’ll find options such as JBOD, Spanning, Raid 0 and Raid 1. The JBOD system is for you to use the drive separately, well NOT the smartest option as the drive has the possibility to fail. Spanning is like complimenting one drive with another, the Raid 0 has the feature to transfer the data faster, but the safest would be the Raid 1 as it somehow clones the data, might be the slowest, but the safest for sure, but hey, the decision’s yours.

PS: do make sure that all your data is secured as if you’re moving to another RAID configuration, the drive will format everything.

USB BACKUPS
If you’re a classic paranoid like me, you know sometimes you just can’t save your datas enough that you almost get too scared of losing everything, after all it’s technology and digital, and harddrive crash does exist. I still have some space left on my WD Passport so I tried to back up some of my chosen datas to the WD Passport, the point of this trial is to see the transfer speed.

Still from the web-app (mycloud.com/setup), there will be the “Backups” menu, and choose USB Backups if you’ll be backing up your datas to the USB, and select the “source” and “destination” folder. From my experience, backing up selected 10 GB of datas cost me less than 3 freaking minutes. OK THAT’S FAST

It might not be mobile, but it IS compact, it’s just nice to see a good looking black box and ironically, I have always wanted my bedroom to look more office like (and believe me I don’t know why), and believe me I am like the most OCD person is the world like I wrapped all the cables and stuff, but this product just came with two cable connectors (ethernet and power supply). My point is visually it’s nice to have something that’s very high end and cool looking standing there gracefully on my desk.

Considering this product works 24/7 every single time, it created very low fan noises (which I appreciate), especially if you’re like me, I need to be at somewhere more reserved and quiet when I am working on my chores, and since I usually work on my stuff late-late night, it just has to be quiet. A little goes along the way.

IS IT REALLY WORTH IT?
I really have no idea whether My Cloud EX2 Ultra will work amazing on a larger scale of users (group users like office), as I think it is perfect for home use, personal and family. Regular weight, big capacity and you can build your own NAS (which again you can control). If you work at fields which require you to deal with large datas (like graphic designers, videomakers, motion graphic artists, and etc), this could be one of the best investment, and in the long run, you’re paying for something that’s cheaper than hiring a cloud service.

Believe me physically it’s not even that big and if you want to carry it around anywhere you can.

Will I recommend it to you?
YES!
I haven’t tried downloading my stored datas from the NAS, and since I am heading off something in a couple of weeks and I might be able to try it and write an update on the blog. The reason I want to try it while I am out somewhere is because I want to know if I spot any issue on the process when I am miles away from my computer and NAS.