Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Western Digital 4TB My Cloud EX2 Ultra Network Attached Storage - NAS

Nice, Well-Designed Consumer NAS, Runs a Bit Hot

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2016

Capacity: DisklessPattern: StorageVerified Purchase

Really nice unit - seems well-made and well-designed. Drive installation was very easy; the top just pops open by pressing a tab, and drives slide in and are locked down with a metal plate on top that is secured with a thumbscrew. WD gives you these little tabs and special post screws that attach to the drives' sides - the screws help guide the drive into place and you can easily pull the drives out with the provided tabs. Attractive unit that looks good on a shelf and goes well with other WD products. I like the vertical design WD external products have, as it better utilizes shelf space.

The firmware in the EX2 Ultra and the 3 TB My Cloud is different from the 2 TB version, and those devices are both are much more responsive than the smaller My Cloud device is. This device also comes out of hibernation/idle state much quicker than the 2 TB WD My Cloud. The EX2 Ultra has I believe a 1.3 GHz processor and 1 GB RAM, which is competitive with the better entry-level RAID NAS's out there.

I installed two 3-TB HGST NAS drives in mine. They do seem to run hot, and when running a large backup to this device, drive temperatures regularly hit 52 and 53 degrees C with the fan running full tilt. I have never seen it get hotter than that, but that is significantly warmer than my QNAPS run (one has Seagate Ironwolfs, and one has WD Reds. I had the QNAP unit with the Reds before I got the EX2, if you're wondering why I didn't put the Reds in the EX2). May well be the HGST drives, which are 7200 RPM drives, just run hotter. Maybe at some point I'll swap them out for WD Red drives and put them in another enclosure, as the Reds seem to run quite cool compared to their competitors.

I have read that most drives are rated to perform to 60 C, but I'd be more comfortable seeing operating temps in the 40's. Right now, at idle and an hour after my last backup, the drives are at 50 and 51 C with the fan not running - in fact it doesn't even turn on until it gets to 52 or so. All of the drive health indicators say "good". I bought a small USB fan, and when I set it to blow air sideways over the top of the EX2, I can get temps to drop into the mid-40's under operating load. The unit's diagnostics always say everything is healthy and normal.

This is more of a consumer-geared device, and while pretty easy to use out of the box for a home user, is not nearly as configurable as the QNAP and Zyxel units, so that may be a negative if you with to set your device's parameters.

This device is set up by default to be available for Time Machine backups, with no special configuration - so if you have a MAC and wish to have an external NAS RAID device, this unit is a great option, and very easy to use (mine is set up as RAID1, where the second drive mirrors the first).

Only "wish" is for WD to allow me to see hardware data (HDD, CPU temperatures, etc) remotely - I have not seen a way to view that info outside of my home network. The QNAP software does allow you to see hardware info remotely via the phone app. Other than that, the WD's phone apps are well designed and easy to use, and allow seamless file access.

5 people found this helpful

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Happy Server Buyer

Favorable Review of EX2 in office setting.

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2016

Capacity: DisklessPattern: StorageVerified Purchase

It arrived on Friday to my office and later on this same Friday I installed 2 hard drives laying around. EX2 told me one drive was faulty so I removed it and set up the machine as a JBOD. This was fast and a piece of cake! I have not been near it since then no need! Over the weekend from my house from several different computers I uploaded some movies and also I downloaded some movies too and utilized multiple uploads / downloads at once from several machines. The WD network is really neat as you have only to input "MyCloud" from any machine in the world. There were no failed downloads / uploads. Addtionally if I accessed my office machine main computer through MS Remote access I could reference the EX2 NAS and play any movie in real time. To be fair I could do real time movie playing across the net before installing the EX2. When I came back to the office on Monday I could play any of the freshly installed 11 movies in real time on the EX2 from any office computer but again I could do that when the movies were scattered across several machines.
Over all it was an impressive faultless performance and we have now put a lot more large files on it than just the test movies.
As you can see we can also back up from house to office and in fact the EX2 Ultra NAS could even be at a third location.

We had in the office a fanless older atom machine running an accounting program that needed a larger disk. However we used the iSCSI function of the EX2 to instead load onto the atom another pseudo drive. We used the iSCSI initiator function in windows. This added drive that steals space from the JBOD drive in the EX2 Hard drive is most useful if you need another dedicated small pseudo drive on a small low powered machine that the machine formats itself. I must add that the speed of the pseudo drive was not impressive! But still it did the trick!

The third use is the WD Sync. I do not fully understand this and why WD loads some files from the computers you elect to sync in an appearent arbritrary fashion without permission when you set up Sync and how do you remove some of these files from Sync. Why not WD not add any and leave adding to the user? WD needs to add one coheseive spelled out non intuitive manual on using and controlling SYNC. Having said that it is important if you are attempting to use this feature to set Windows to continual back up. Appearently if you delete a file in the Sync sphere it gets deleted from all particitpating machines. I do not see how to remove files from this situation. Nevertheless Sync appearently lets me reference files on any computer in the net from my computer WITHOUT going onto the computer holding that file. For example instead of referenceing an accounting spread sheet on say Daniel-PC for data I reference a copy on my machine in documents BUT WD is keeping the copy of my machine up to date with the master original on Daniel-PC. Again a much better manual with everything and no gaps and no intuitive is needed for Sync.

In conclusion this is a great buy as long as WD continues the free web service and free use of the name "MyCloud". For comparison we later set up our own NAS at my house on a $150 Bee Box using NAS4Free and use the WinSCP publically available utility to span the net. This takes several hours to set up and is good but not as good as EX2. Recommended to everyone. Roe5685.

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Spydo Staxxe

Great lil' NAS, perfect use for all those 3.5" SATA HDD we have laying around!

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2024

Capacity: DisklessPattern: StorageVerified Purchase

I was hesitant to buy, because I'd previously purchased the WD HOME Cloud; an inept NAS at best. I sent that one back after one day discovering it had childishly simple and nearly worthless interface.

But the diskless version of this one looked like a good inexpensive option, a major step up from the HOME version, and since I have boxes of old HDD's, a god way to make use of some of those.

My main complaint is networking. It only supports ONE CAT cable wired. 2-Cat aggregation is faster, and wireless would be nice. But aside from that, no major concerns.

I added two 2TB drives, plugged in network cable ,and powered up. These companies say you can discover NAS using various sites like mycloud.com discover.seagate, etc. But they don't ever seem to work. I went into my router to find it in the list of connected devices (MYCLOUD), and pointed the browser at that IP. It responded after some delay and using the default log in, I was able to get in and configure.

It created the two disk RAID array (striped) in about ten minutes. Users and Shares are easy to add and assign, and you can give them READ or READ/WRITE access. It allows adding GROUPS of users also, but I don't see how that's useful since I don' t see how to assign Group Privs.

It had a really nice list of APPS , and remarkably, some were actually useful! Even virus protection, connectivity enhancers, etc.

Then I went to work getting users and shares established. I added one for each PC , and each IPHONE. Then I went into WINDOWS backup settings , mapped the matching SHARE, and set up backup and file history to point at this share. I also imaged each PC and saved the images in the share.

The IPHONES were a little harder- in those cases, I had to add WD accounts for each IPHONE, and enable CLOUD access BY user for each email address / WD account.

THAT concerns me. Seagate recently dropped support for NAS products. What if WD decides to do that, and these cloud accounts vanish? Trouble for sure. I don't like being so dependent on these companies to support their products for very long. Seagate is a good example.

The IPHONE part I don't like too much. Yes, I could move or copy files- photos or movies to the NAS. But what I'd PREFER to do is to go into IPHONE CLOUD BACKUP and point THAT at this NAS. I didn't see a way to do that. I think Apple prefers that we pay them $$$ each month to backup phones with THEM. I was able to move enough files to the NAS to use a cheaper APPLE plan, but I was not able to replace the plan entirely which was my preference.

Overall as a NAS storage solution it gets an A. And the screens are intuitive and packed with details even on drive health. I'm an IT professional and I like the screens. Even CPU and NETWORK activity monitors are displayed.

A plus- there are two USB connections in back. I plugged in a 2TB micro SD, and a another USB thumb drive. Both showed up as USB devices with correct storage, and I can freely move files to and from them. You can also move files to and from the USB shares to the disk shares. A handy way to save camera photos, etc. I was only able to make these PUBLIC shares- not by USER. A minus.

I tried to "trick" the NAS, plugging in a USB dock which had 3 more ports. THAT didn't seem to work though- it only recognized one of the three ports! Odd that. Haven't tricked it yet but maybe an APP will be available to support USB docks.

What would be nice is if the user could plug in a wireless or even bluetooth adapter, and add APPS on the APP page, to support them. Or allow users to add their OWN apps! Listen up WD nice ideas those.

In conclusion, this is a very economical , viable alternative to other NAS offerings. It's the best NAS I've ever owned and the diskless version is a great price!

2 people found this helpful

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Andrew Verner

Took some tinkering but works great.

Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2024

Capacity: 4TBPattern: StorageVerified Purchase

Took a lot of trouble shooting to get it to work with Time Machine for my Mac but after that no complaints

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BWB St Chas IL

Disappointing Product, Does NOT Work as Expected

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2017

Capacity: DisklessPattern: StorageVerified Purchase

I purchased the unit without drives and bought WD Red drives separately. I did this as I noticed many users having problems. I felt if I had a problem unit, I would rather return the unit and keep the drives for an alternative solution. Initial installation appeared to go well. Drives formatted quickly and all of the health and diagnostic indicators were good. I was able to set up shares and mapped network drives. All seemed well. The user interface was OK, not great.

As I started some data transfers, I noticed that the transfer would hang. I finally got about 600 GB of data to transfer. I added a drive to the USB port and did a backup. I shut the unit down and removed the USB drives. I felt this would give me an opportunity to see if there were any issues after powering down and powering back up. This turned out to be a wise decision. On power up, instead of having 2.4 TB remaining of my 3TB, I had only 400 GB. Another folder appeared eating up disk space and I was unable to remove it.

I contacted WD support. I asked the support person if he had ever seen this problem. He mentioned that he had seen it a few times. His only conclusion was to do a full restore. So much for hours of transferring data. The restore brought the unit back. At this point, I chose to not use the RAID option and just have the unit in JBOD mode. After hours of reformatting to get to JBOD, I started my file transfer again. The first 100 GB went well. I started the next file transfer and the unit immediately hung. No data would transfer. I could open the home page and all indicators were good. I ran diagnostics and they came back ok. I disconnected the mapped network drive from my PC and re-booted my PC. Same thing. I then rebooted the WD EX2 and again rebooted my PC, mapped the network drive and it would still hang trying to transfer data.

At this point, since the unit can’t transfer data, I contacted Amazon to return the unit as defective.

Overall, I think this unit is marginal. I am very confident in the drives that WD sells, but I feel this product does not have the quality that I expect. As always, Amazon was prompt in issuing the shipping label for a defective item. Thank you Amazon!

8 people found this helpful

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Michael Feldman

A very reliable NAS

Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2022

Capacity: DisklessPattern: StorageVerified Purchase

This is my second Western Digital NAS, and I've had it for about a month now. It was a breeze to set up. I currently have dual 16T WD Red HDD's installed, and there has been no issue accessing them. Most of my equipment is on the Windows 10 platform. The NAS has had no difficulties seeing the computers, and vice-versa.

It is possible to run "Apps" on the NAS, so it can double as a media server. You can even access your data from the cloud, so you are not limited to your LAN.

Overall, the EX2 Ultra has been a hassle-free experience, and I feel comfortable recommending it.

4 people found this helpful

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Charles

Better way to go compared to the WD Cloud Home

Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2022

Capacity: DisklessPattern: StorageVerified Purchase

I have a WD Cloud Home and I can't change hard drives in it. This one I can put up to 2 drives and swap them in or out as upgrade is needed. Similarly priced in the range of the no name brands but WD brand stands for something. Good cloud app on the phone and easy to use. Just a pain moving data from the old WD Cloud Home to the new EX2 drive. Can't connect the two together with USB. Have to use another USB drive to move data to from the old one and then connect that to the EX2 to move the data to it. Wish I can cut out the middle man usb drive. Other than that, it's great. EX2 uses different app (My Cloud OS5) than the WD Cloud Home. FYI.

3 people found this helpful

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Nathan C. H

makes video file upload much easier

Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2020

Capacity: 4TBPattern: StorageVerified Purchase

I was looking at all different types of cloud drives and choose western digital. They have great chat tech support who really know a lot.
1st do not plug it into a surge protector he told me it must be in the wall.
I am very techy computer person this was still hard to setup. I got it plugged in fine but somehow my drive turned red lights maybe because I canceled the firm ware. I had to do a full 15 min reset. Then I was able to fix thented lights by an internet search saying to setup raid. I set that up in the mycloud settings. Has a lot of features and setup. Then I also finished the download of the firmware. When you download it from mycloud it is much quicker than doing it from the phone app so I do not advise that.
Now everything is working great. Only issue is the Mac app for this unit isn't connecting from my Mac but the phone one does. When using lots of files is a little hard to tell they are all copied.

I was using drop box sometimes takes days to upload a video file. This makes that so much easier to send video files since there is no uploading. Cuts back on a major headache. I got mine used it was the price of dropbox for one year.
However the big issue if it can't be resolved is downloads take way to long even if the file is under 2gb. I may hwve to return if it can't be fixed

9 people found this helpful

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walkingman

Quality NAS drive, but not for everyone.

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2022

Capacity: DisklessPattern: StorageVerified Purchase

First the good stuff about this product: It was easy to follow the set up instructions on the WD "dashboard" and get it my two disc drives loaded properly and ready to accept files to store or stream. The unit seemed well built and was easy to load the hard drives into it. However, I use this device mostly to store hundreds of music CDs and Hi-Rez music files on, in order to stream them thru a high quality music streaming component in my stereo. This is where things got frustrating. Unlike my older WD "My Cloud" from several years ago, the company no longer includes Twonky or an equivalent program, built in, to make set up for music streaming easy. Consequently, the unit did not show up as a source AT ALL on my streamer's app as a music source. I was told by their tech support to download Twonky on the WD app which I did and finally, it began to show up as a source, but wouldn't stream. The files were "unavailable". Undeterred, I kept calling their tech support and they kept inching me toward the correct solution. By the time I finished talking to the fourth tech guy, and after many hours of trying different settings on the Twonky app, I finally was able to stream music. With my older My Cloud, I was set up and streaming in a matter of minutes and knew much less about these items back then. I can only conclude that WD does NOT make this unit with music streaming in mind, but more for computer files back up and photo storage and the like. I like the unit, now that it's working, but would not recommend it to a fellow music streamer. Much too difficult (with Twonky) to set up, unless you don't mind calling WD tech support a few times! C'mon Western Digital! Make it easier for us music loving, non-computer geeks!

35 people found this helpful

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Derek M.

use it as a NAS... don't try for more than that and you will be great.

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2021

Capacity: DisklessPattern: StorageVerified Purchase

i threw an exo 8gb drive in it raid 0 JBOD... raid 0 means no backup.. as much storage as possible...fastest read and write times because it leverages the write times of both drives and creates an address table crossing both drives.. this makes the 2 drives faster then either drive alone... but if you loose one you loose everything... saw a ton of reviews and had to write my own.. because people complained about loosing data when they did JBOD... i mean google raid config... Raid 1 will cut your capacity in half, but mirrors drives.. higher raids are not available because they require more drives... had a brown out and s.m.a.r.t. said my drive failed... it lied.. and had to reboot the nas to clear the error... sometimes when the ex2 wakes it says fan failed... just a crappy fan that spools up slow.. checked several times... the processor isn't enough to run plex well... but you can attach the nas to your plex server and i am direct streaming anything i want with no issue to 3 destinations. for the price... it's great!.. i can't complain with just a few firmware hickups is all those are... had to remove 1 star because... well the firmware updates they pushed out may have added features.. but it was fine out the box for a NAS... and the false fan error did start untill the first updated it recieved.

used it with time machine once to replace a mac air ssd did the job fine too. didn't effect anything to add that functionality and remove.. pain to add nas to mac.. but.. thats mac's fault...

EDIT:
Long time later.. NAS is running great with 2x8tb EXO drives.. only has a single gigabit port, raid0 with the 2 drives is just enough to max it out. it gets over 10hrs of video playback from it every week. no problems. still a solid chassis

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