- WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT FOR MAC PORTABLE HARD DRIVE HOW TO
- WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT FOR MAC PORTABLE HARD DRIVE MOVIE
- WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT FOR MAC PORTABLE HARD DRIVE INSTALL
- WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT FOR MAC PORTABLE HARD DRIVE PC
- WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT FOR MAC PORTABLE HARD DRIVE TV
Data transfer speeds easily hit over 90 Mbps on LAN and 50 Mbps over Wi-Fi. Since I use some relatively fancy network hardware, speeds were amazing. It still took me a few days to sort out all the kinks in the system, but once sorted, it was easy to forget that the device even existed.
WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT FOR MAC PORTABLE HARD DRIVE PC
As a bonus, the M圜loud consumes a fraction of the power that my PC consumes, so my electricity bill isn't going to shoot through the roof. With this one device and a few days of tinkering, I’ve vastly streamlined data use in my house and made it convenient for anyone to use and access data storage with minimal fuss.
I would get email alerts when anything happened to the M圜loud drive, even a power outage.
WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT FOR MAC PORTABLE HARD DRIVE TV
The Xbox One S can access the media library and can now stream movies to the TV at any time. Downloads automatically go to the M圜loud drive. Guests can access a limited collection of photos, music and movies. All photos are accessible from anywhere to all members of my family. All iPhones now backup to the M圜loud drive. Movies and music stored on iTunes are now accessible to everyone.
All MacBooks will now automatically backup their data to the M圜loud drive. All devices that need access to the data on the M圜loud drive can now access it over the home network. On the rear you will find the gigabit Ethernet port and a USB 3.0 portĪfter setup, my home storage environment looked something like this: If all the above is gibberish, then any instructions I give will also be gibberish.
WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT FOR MAC PORTABLE HARD DRIVE HOW TO
If you’re competent enough to know what a CAT6 cable is and how to set up network shares, you’ll be competent enough to do the setup yourself. I won’t bore you with the details of the setup process. Or rather, enabling this is very easy, but only if you know what you’re doing. There is no easy way to enable any of this.
Moving on, the drive supports several features, including the option to host a DLNA server, your iTunes library, etc. An average user is not going to know about the dangers of giving everyone admin privileges, securing the account, etc. There is no way that an average user is going to know how to do this and I do wish that WD’s messaging around this was clearer. I know that I need to fix its IP, assign privilege levels for accounts, etc. The initial setup process only initialises the unit and sets up a network-connected storage hub that’s invisible to your devices unless you know what you’re doing.Īs a power user, I knew that I needed to set up network shares, create multiple user accounts, one for every person in the house, and a separate guest account. However, it’s considerably more complicated than that. The setup process as advertised by WD on the box is a 3-step one. Hooking the M圜loud unit up to my router was as easy as plugging in the bundled ethernet cable to the device and my router, but this is where the challenge really starts. If setup correctly, all your data will simply be accessible from anywhere in the world and on any device and you’ll never have to think about it again.
WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT FOR MAC PORTABLE HARD DRIVE INSTALL
Install it somewhere in your house, plug it into your router/network switch and then forget that it physically exists. The M圜loud device variants offer up to 8 TB of storage.Īs the name implies, think of the M圜loud as your own little personal cloud storage box. You do not carry this around with you when you go from place to place. This is not a device that you plug into a PC or a laptop and transfer files to. The first thing you need to know about the WD M圜loud is that it’s not a traditional external hard disk. They willingly obliged - being a tech journalist has its perks!Īfter spending a month with the unit, here are my thoughts. I wanted to test it out for myself and called up WD for a review unit. It certainly seems like a great option, and I’ll be trying one out soon enough, but it’s relatively expensive, costing as much as a cheap PC.Īn alternative that I found quite interesting, and more suited to my needs, was the WD M圜loud. This is essentially a tiny little PC that’s attached to your network and handles data. One of the most obvious solutions to this problem is to get a NAS (network attached storage) box.
WESTERN DIGITAL MY PASSPORT FOR MAC PORTABLE HARD DRIVE MOVIE
Even something as simple as streaming my iTunes movie library requires setup. While this has been a functional solution, it’s still problematic. Accessing from a Mac and smartphones is possible, but it’s not as straightforward, requiring specific apps and jumping through a few hoops. This isn’t as easy as it sounds because that setup only really works for other Windows PCs. I’ve had to set up network shares that everyone can access and also had to ensure that the PC is running 24/7. So far, my solution has been to use one of the PCs for handling all my storage needs. With so many devices, there’s no way to have everything in one spot for the entire family to enjoy. The WD M圜loud drive is difficult to set up, but extremely useful once done
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