Amazon.com: Customer reviews: WD 12TB My Cloud EX2 Ultra Network Attached Storage - NAS

Top positive review

Great NAS solution

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2017

This has ended my saga of trying to build cheap, fast, high-availability storage for my home network. I have several USB drives connected to a headless server, and I wanted to create a single point of backup for those individual devices, as well as system imaging (i.e.: Time Machine) and generally make all of my data accessible to any machine on the network. I tried various multi-drive RAID USB-attached storage solutions and none of them were working well in my Linux environment. Finally I just bit the bullet and went true NAS (over Ethernet) as opposed to trying to let my server handle it at USB3 speeds and every little finicky problem and annoyance I had has gone away. The setup was easy, once you learn the interface, and so far it has been up for every connection I've attempted to make to it. It doesn't slow to a crawl on long file transfer operations and average speed seems good (considering that most of the copy operations originate from USB2 devices). When copying directly from a PC to the EX2 instead of from another USB device, I've only ever broken into the high 50MB/s range, but that's still quite a bit better than the 25MB/s average I get when archiving from USB2 onto the EX2.

27 people found this helpful

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frescolito

Hardware is fine, supportig software is unreliable.

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2017

* Update 01/11/2018 * I'm officially giving up on this NAS and will be replacing it with another one from a different manufacturer. Syncing now never works outside of my home network. I also can't access the dashboard anymore even when I'm connected to my home network. Using this device has been nothing but 7 months of inconsistent performance and frustrating software issues that seem to have no resolution. Don't be fooled by Western Digital's answer to this review - it did absolutely nothing to help. Only thing left for me to do now is decide whether I'd want to attempt to sell this thing off (dunno that I could in good conscience) or burn it.

* Original Review*

Five months of use and I'm still running into the same recurring problems with the WD Sync software. It'll stop syncing intermittently, showing a "No internet connection detected" message while my computer clearly has internet access. When it's not that it hangs at "Signing in to MyCloudEX2Ultra" or it reports that the device is missing. I've tried rebooting the device, adjusting settings within the Dashboard, adjusting settings on the router, adjusting firewall/malware settings on my computer and uninstalling and reinstalling the WD Sync software numerous times - nothing works. A firmware update didn't help, either. The software just appears to be extremely temperamental and unpredictable. When it does work, it's great, and automatically syncs and backs up files between my desktop and laptop as expected. Unfortunately, however, I'm frequently forced to use the My Cloud web interface to manually upload or retrieve files. At least I can say that the hardware has been reliable and I haven't experienced any data corruption or loss like other users have reported. Still, this system isn't exactly working as expected and the software issues are really frustrating. I'm aware that numerous other users have reported similar problems but, unfortunately, it appears that the support Western Digital offers is severely lacking, and user-run support forums are confusing, irrelevant or lead to dead-ends.

183 people found this helpful

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Abacus

Great Hardware, not sold on the WD software (yet)

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2016

Size: 16TBVerified Purchase

So I ordered the 16tb EX2 through through Amazon and it was fulfilled by HPP Enterprises - who as luck would have it sent me the diskless version instead - and whom despite excessive correspondence refused to fulfill with the correct unit and were unnecessarily painful to deal with. So one month after they confirmed receipt of the return and I'm still awaiting their refund. Don't purchase anything which is fulfilled by HPP Enterprises as they are clearly administratively challenged or perhaps worse.

As far as the product goes I ultimately purchased directly from WD. The product is actually well designed and well built, albeit crazy slow (likely do solely to the software). I have about 5.5 TB of pics & movies and some music and this has been running several weeks and is only 80% complete on the initial backup running WD Sync with the device in raid 1. I suspect in the future it would be unnoticeable with singular files over my gig network, but this initial Sync is frustrating. In fairness I get sporadic messages about not being unable to Sync certain files and that it would re-try shortly, so maybe it hangs in between. I haven't spent much time focused on the software as backing up to a 16tb WD Duo (great device as well) gave me comfort for a backup prior to receiving this unit. I'll explore root cause at some point. Speed aside utilizing WD Sync, I like the device. The drives are quiet, the unit is not unattractive and frankly its setup was easier than other WD cloud devices I've used in the past. I am a long-term fan of WD products, but as most WD users realize their software is often not their strong suit, but from a hardware perspective its seems great, I can move files to and from it rapidly within explorer and utilize it fully as a NAS, but wish they would include some better software. I was excited to see that they now have support for PLEX and do intend to set it up in the future and will advise how that worked out in a follow up.

124 people found this helpful

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44 comments

Bhambrew

So Far So Good

Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2018

Size: 0TBVerified Purchase

After using this NAS for over a month, I am very happy with everything so far. Reason for only four stars is because the software setup was not easy. I ordered the NAS and hard drives separately, and physically installing the drives was the easy part. Once the unit booted up, I had a hard time getting the drives to mount. I spent a long time looking at the support pages at WD without finding a simple solution. Finally, thanks to Google searches, YouTube, and online forum posts, I was able to get this thing up and running. In my opinion, this is not as simple as "plug-and-play" for most average users. Problem was having to go into the RAID settings in order to setup my NAS as JABOD, which is confusing. In any case, once everything was up and running, the unit as been working flawlessly. We are using it for TimeMachine backups from three different Mac computers, and as host for huge iTunes library and photo archive. Highly recommended if you want to backup multiple computers, or keep a your data secure on your own private cloud. Might seem a little expensive at first, but really this NAS is a great value when you compare it to the cost of paying $10/month or more for iCloud, Google or Dropbox. You control your own cloud device, and it has all the same features that the paid cloud services offer.

6 people found this helpful

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Matt

Worth the cost

Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2018

Size: 8TBVerified Purchase

I will edit this review at a later date. Till then this should be considered an initial review only.

Just got this NAS to help me backup my photography as well as give me access to all my files on the drive while away. This drive does all I need it to. I had it setup within minutes. I've read plenty of reviews saying the setup was a hassle. Not true, at least not for me. I didn't have to forward any ports. I just plugged it in, let it setup, and was off and running within 5 mins or less. When I transferred my entire photography folder (119 GB alone), it took it roughly 25 - 30 mins I'd say. Really wasn't rushing it due to the hard drives are NAS drives and it was trasferring over a network so its not going to be lightning fast unless you got a gigabyte connection, or even then, your not gonna get the speed like you would if it was internal. But for me, this little NAS works great.

Noise -
I did see a couple of reviews that said it can be loud. I don't like the sound of my computer running at night so normally I turn it off, With this, I didn't notice it was even there. It has a power scheduler built in to turn it into hibernate mode (I think, haven't tested this), but even leaving it on regular powered up mode, its quiet enough to be discrete.

Why 4 Stars?
I have to side with 4 stars only because I think the interface is a bit disorganized. I think they started very well or maybe they've been improving over the years but the interface doesn't seem efficient to me. You have to switch over to multiple tabs to get the job you are trying to do done. The functionally is there with this device though. It has a great amount of features that are working great and i'm looking forward to using it to its fullest potential.

6 people found this helpful

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R. Mendez

Works OK but doesn't have enough horsepower

Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2020

Size: 4TBVerified Purchase

I held off for a long time in purchasing a network drive due to the cost and nothing in my price range having good reviews. I'm somewhat technically savvy but not an expert, especially in this area. My only use case for this was wanting to run a Plex server on my home network to watch movies from my smart TV. After owning and using this for three months these are my thoughts.

It was fairy simple to set up and get going. I felt that it could have better and more complete instructions, but I was able to figure it out. It took a little bit of doing but was able to get the Plex app on my smart TV to connect to the drive and configure the Plex server, and once I had media on it we were in business. The only issue I have found is that for some movie files, the drive freezes or stutters. I believe this has something to do with the file formats, and that this drive doesn't have enough processing power to transcode movies in real time. I'm not very familiar or knowledgeable about it and don't know what formats work and which don't, but it's frustrating to be halfway through a movie and just get a spinning icon. It happens to about 10% of my movie files.

Once the drive was up and working, I thought about using it back up our Mac laptops. I set up timemachine and it was very easy to do, but this keeps failing now and I keep getting errors that backups have failed. Since this was not my main use for the drive, I'm not upset about it, but if that's what you want to do hopefully you can figure it out.

Overall, I'm happy with my purchase and wish I had bought an even bigger drive. I have not experienced the issue that many reviewers here have mentioned where the drive disappears from the network, even after three months of use. So hopefully the company has fixed that now or if you're only using it with Macs to transfer media files to a Plex server that isn't an issue. The lack of power to watch some movies and the backup failures with Apple timemachine lead me to only give it 4 out of 5 stars. I would purchase this again.

One person found this helpful

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Nicolas Durden

Easy to setup, but figuring out what software you need is confusing

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2019

Size: 0TBVerified Purchase

Overall this was very easy to set up, and convenient. Creating accounts etc went well, and once I figured it out, I disabled RAID and I was able to actually use it, as if you only have one disk and try to use it right out of the box it will mysteriously not work. You need to manage the volumes and change the storage type.

My main issue was finding which software was the best to use, as there are about 20 under the Western Digital downloads page. I ended up using WD SmartWare as I wanted to make a full backup of a computer, but you might want to only sync certain files, which I don't think WD SmartWare would be ideal for.

EDIT: I said I ended up using WD SmartWare, but I actually meant to say that I ended up using FreeFileSync/GoodSync as WD SmartWare would not upload files over 50MB for some reason. Might have been my computer but your mileage may vary. I read things saying that enabling shadow copies in services should fix it, buy mine were enabled. FreeFileSync worked very well (and is free!) however, I had the least issues with it compared to any other payed option (GoodSync was a close second, but it kept getting hung up and I had to dig to make it not sync system files which was causing that, Acronis literally did not begin to sync after me pressing begin and leaving it running for 6+ hours)

3 people found this helpful

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F. McNally

High transfer rate; simple setup.

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2020

Size: 20TBVerified Purchase

I'm using this NAS drive for Plex storage of movies/vids etc. I have collected way too many over the past 5 years and am too lazy (and tired!) to remove those that no one will ever watch, including me, and reduce the storage necessary. So it is what it is. I have had pretty good luck with other WD NAS drives (I think I have 5 or 6 purchased over the past 10 years on my network). But the advantage of this EX2 vs the older MyClouds is more capacity and 3x the transfer rate over 1gb cable (most of the other NAS drives have the USB interface only and therefore have to be shared via a PC or server and cannot work independently on the network or "cloud"). I have this one mirrored. My 6yr old MyCloudDuo was striped and the B drive was failing so I decided to dump some change into this. This NAS device does have the Plex app capabilities built-in, but I'm relying on a PC or later my Server for that functionality; have too many users accessing with this virus crap... sigh

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E. A. Lazarus

Neat and cost-effective if you already have some big disks laying around.

Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2018

Size: 0TBVerified Purchase

If you have disks available this is a very nice NAS server. Seems perfect after a few months usage. Allows 2 internal disks as well as 2 usb-3 external ones. Integrates seamlessly into a Windows home network. If a Mac is present the macOS will allow time machine to run to this mycloud.
Allows transfers at least to 500 Mbps. It might be less attractive if your home network is slow (<50 Mbps). You might want to do LAN speed tests
to see if your network is fast enough to make a device like this convenient. I had one issue getting started in that it appeared to only offer a RAID option, but choose the JBOD option and the disks will be independent. In an earlier life I had a Synology device. This seems superior (no whining or nagging). It updates itself without any issues. Browser interface is good enough. Fix the ip number and you can log in from any device by just tiping the ip into the browser address bar. You don't really need the WD bloatware on your PC.

I am adding to this review after a few months usage. The hardware works flawlessly and it integrates very well into a windows home network. The automatic software updates so far have not caused any problems. The one big flaw is in antivirus software. This is set to a maximum 24 hour cycle and the processor is not fast. If you have a few hundred Gb it will never finish. There does not appear to be any easy way to install your own protection. Tje software is Busybox and does not appear amenable to additional applications nor to changing the antivirus scheduler. Eventually, this defect becomes a big issue. I am reducing to 4 stars because of this issue

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Amazon Customer

Works well for storage, the media player is a challenge at times

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2020

Size: 8TBVerified Purchase

I have been using this for a little over a year, and it is great for large storage, and yet lacks a little with regard to using as a media player. It functions, and when it does it is great. I am still struggling to find a way to get consistent performance with uploading files and them becoming available for streaming. (This is so very strange) It is very particular about file format and while it will stream mp4, it will not stream all mp4 formats. Every time I think I find the format settings, I stumble onto something else that seems to impact. Additionally, when connecting through my Samsung BlueRay player, it will not see files that I know to be on the device when I navigate to the folder on the device. This may be something that tech could address quickly and yet I have not reached out to them.

One person found this helpful

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Zip

Price is a bit steep, but very good above average backup solution.

Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2020

Size: 8TBVerified Purchase

I honestly cannot get along without a NAS drive now. WD has won me over with their DLNA solution with MyCloud products. Let me be clear, MyCloud Home is no good what so ever so steer clear of those. So since WD has replaced their original MyCloud line up with mirroring and RAID capabilities now, that's the only viable route to go. Fortunately though, if money is an issue, most of your current routers can deal with attached storage and offer DLNA support. There's no such thing as dvd players in my house anymore and since I'm very pro Roku, media player takes care of everything.

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Amazon Customer

Good device, two minor issues

Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2019

Size: 8TBVerified Purchase

I've had good luck with Western Digital products and have several MyCloud devices to back up my photography content. I was looking for a larger NAS device to be an on-site backup for the other devices. The EX2 Ultra seemed like a good solution and overall it works well. However, there are two issues. One is the capacity. The version I bought is marketed as 8TB, but that is misleading. While the packaging says 8TB, when you take it out of the box it is really 4TB in a RAID1 configuration, meaning it writes the same data to each of the two disks for fault tolerance. In order to get the full 8TB you need to break the RAID1 array and set it up as RAID0 - and you must do this initially. If you try to change later you will lose whatever is on the disk. Since this drive is a backup for my other devices, and I also have an off-site copy, I don't need the failover. Buyers just need to be aware of this design and if you truly want 8TB with failover, you need to purchase the 16GB model. The other issue, and in my opinion the bigger one is that there isn't a native tool to backup *other* Western Digital devices to this one. You can back up the EX2 device to some other MyCloud devices. There are third party tools available to perform copy/synch functions to the EX2 but it sure would be a lot more useful if this was native.

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