WD launches two-bay networked attached storage system through My Cloud Ex2

With the growing technology ‘cloud’ has become one of the most widely used buzzwords. In recent few years, many organizations have looked to fetch the benefits from various ‘cloud’ products. This trend is accelerating with time, as more and more businesses are running with the help of ‘cloud’ concept. Network Attached Storage (NAS) is a personalised cloud storage service, which allows you to keep your data like files, media etc. at a centralised home network.

Western Digital, one of the leading manufacturers of different storage products, aims to capitalize the NAS concept using My Cloud product line. With two variants 1-bay and 2-bay already under its name, the company recently launched a 2-bay product, EX2. Ever since the evolution of these variants, the company has made a lot of effort in educating the consumer about the benefits of the NAS system. As a result, it has been observed that 2-bay and 4-bay variants have left a strong impact as compared to other configurations.

The launch of 2-bay NAS system has entirely changed the way a professional market works. The 2-bay My Cloud EX2 system allows you to backup entire data residing on Windows as well as Mac based systems at a centralised location. It can be easily done by using WD SmartWare Pro software for windows base system or Apple Time Machine backup software for Mac based systems. In addition, it supports application based on Android and iOS platform, which allows users to manage files on these devices. Moreover, the user can make use of the popular cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive to share files with third party applications.

The My Cloud EX2 is a diskless device, however, it can also be formed with a WD Red hard drive of 4TB, 6TB and 8TB capacities. Such forms provide great flexibility, as there is always a chance of further expansion using a USB 3.0 slots. The system allows data protection with various supportive options like USB, RAID 1, Cloud, LAN/WAN backups etc. The other configuration includes the drive management options including  JBOD, spanning modes, RAID 0, RAID 1. However, by default, My Cloud EX2 has a RAID 1 configuration.

Server features

The new NAS model offers additional advanced features like an integrated file server, FTP server, backup server, and P2P download server. With this, the user can save, share, backup, and manage huge data on a single device. The system also supports a number of third party apps like phpBB, SquezeCenter, Joomla! and more. The system is widely compatible with most of the Windows and MacOS based systems. The user has the option to purchase My Cloud EX2 with or without the hard drives. The diskless version is available in both US and UK for €199 (£164, AU$304) with a limited warranty of 2 years. However, the cost of the 4TM model is €339 (£279, AU$518, the 6TB model is €419 (£344, AU$640), and  8TB version is €539 (£443, AU$824) with a warranty of 2 years.