Building a personal cloud for home use

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roLLz

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Ok so I'm considering building my home network around something like a WD MyCloud 4TB.

My thinking behind this is that I could drop HDD capacity requirements on my next laptop and tablet and have the added benefit of being able to access all my media on any device in my home, stream my downloads directly to my tv, etc.

The other and possibly cheaper way of doing this would be to invest in a router that can accommodate an external HDD via USB.

Or should I just build something myself with off the shelf components?

Any opinions, advice, etc would be helpful and appreciated.

Thanks in advance
 
I have 2 WDMyBook Live and 2 WDMyCloud drives attached to my home network. All my media (movies/series/music/home videos and pics) are stored on them and it works seamlessly with my Plex/SABNZB/CouchPotato/Sonar setup. Pics and videos taken by both me and my wife on our cellphones also syncs to OneDrive and then directly on to the drives and then available on Plex even when not at home.. Makes my media easier to manage.

I have it on an unmanaged switch that is also connected to my TV, router and Laptop. Only devices that are on wireless are the tablets and cellphones.

I have a router that can take an external drive but was a mission to get it working and it fails to read the drive most of the time. Haven't had an issue with one of the WD devices not being picked up. Also with the new WDMyCloud drives you can add additional drives via USB should you need to expand.

EDIT: Only manual stuff I add is from my DSLR and to add a new series or movie.
 
Don't over-complicate things, just get a decent gigabit switch and start building your network with shared drives.
I have 4 Microservers and about 100 Tb of space across multiple drives.
I still know where everything is, because the devices are categorised for different types of media.
 
roLLz said:
Ok so I'm considering building my home network around something like a WD MyCloud 4TB.

My thinking behind this is that I could drop HDD capacity requirements on my next laptop and tablet and have the added benefit of being able to access all my media on any device in my home, stream my downloads directly to my tv, etc.

The other and possibly cheaper way of doing this would be to invest in a router that can accommodate an external HDD via USB.

Or should I just build something myself with off the shelf components?

Any opinions, advice, etc would be helpful and appreciated.

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Easiest (and possibly cheapest) would be to get a router with a USB. I bought an ASUS one the other day for like R600 and comes with all the functionality you seek out of the box.

The alternate (geeky) way would be perhaps to get a Raspberry Pi and use it as your always on server with your harddrive connected.

Both options would cost approximately the same:)
 
The mycloud devices are really handy I doubt you will be unhappy with it.
 
LazyLion said:
Don't over-complicate things, just get a decent gigabit switch and start building your network with shared drives.
I have 4 Microservers and about 100 Tb of space across multiple drives.
I still know where everything is, because the devices are categorised for different types of media.
Click to expand...
+1

Microservers are awesome.
 
LazyLion said:
Don't over-complicate things, just get a decent gigabit switch and start building your network with shared drives.
I have 4 Microservers and about 100 Tb of space across multiple drives.
I still know where everything is, because the devices are categorised for different types of media.
Click to expand...

This sounds like an attractive option. Compared to the WD MyCloud set up, what would this cost? Aside from the storage itself.
 
roLLz said:
This sounds like an attractive option. Compared to the WD MyCloud set up, what would this cost? Aside from the storage itself.
Click to expand...
The WD setup might be cheaper though than the micro server setup. You would have to add drives to the server for storage, where as the WD you could pick up a 4TB mycloud somewhere.

I do speak under correction, so if somebody wants rectify me that's fine :)
 
roLLz said:
This sounds like an attractive option. Compared to the WD MyCloud set up, what would this cost? Aside from the storage itself.
Click to expand...

Start off with one MicroServer - Will cost you around R2000 to R3000. Then add one large hard drive - about R1500.
Then keep adding more drives and more servers as needed.
A good network switch will cost you about R800.
 
I'm planning something similar but intend using Freenas. An open source NAS software. Not sure if anyone else has experience with it.
I plan on using an old PC I have lying around and just add drives as I go along.
Also allows for plugins such as Plex, Sonarr and more.
 
I have a dumb question :

What's the difference between having a personal cloud and having a external USB drive / NAS connected to router / HP server with 4 drives in it ?
 
Dolby said:
I have a dumb question :

What's the difference between having a personal cloud and having a external USB drive / NAS connected to router / HP server with 4 drives in it ?
Click to expand...
Private Cloud you can access from outside. A nas as well, but you need to have better security in place for your NAS.
 
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