WD My Cloud

Made the mistake of buying a WD My Cloud Drive being told I could
access it remotely as I would any drive. Locally, on my LAN, I can map
it to a drive.

But you cannot, according to WD technical support, remotely map to a
drive letter.
You have to copy / past through their My Cloud App.
That seems really stupid to me.

All the stuff is there on the laptop so that the My Cloud App can
access, so why cannot they write code to connect Windows Explored via a
drive map reference.

Does anybody know anything about this?
Is there a cloud drive that can do drive mapping? Seagate ?? etc.

I need to run a kiosk type app, no user intervention, and send small
files to the My Cloud Drive as the app needs.

WD does have a smart phone icon like a drop box so it is does that sort
of thing on a smart phone, Android.

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Made the mistake of buying a WD My Cloud Drive being told I could
access it remotely as I would any drive. Locally, on my LAN, I can map
it to a drive.

But you cannot, according to WD technical support, remotely map to a
drive letter.
You have to copy / past through their My Cloud App.
That seems really stupid to me.

All the stuff is there on the laptop so that the My Cloud App can
access, so why cannot they write code to connect Windows Explored via a
drive map reference.

Does anybody know anything about this?
Is there a cloud drive that can do drive mapping? Seagate ?? etc.

I need to run a kiosk type app, no user intervention, and send small
files to the My Cloud Drive as the app needs.

WD does have a smart phone icon like a drop box so it is does that sort
of thing on a smart phone, Android.

I'm unsure about your question but want to ask if the drive can be used
the same as any other external drive, e.g. plug it into a pc via usb, it
gets assigned a drive letter etc.?

From what you say, I'd not want that drive either btw. Having to use
some 3rd party app to access the drive is ridiculous if it's on your own
network. To not be able to map it to a drive letter in some manner to
allow normal sharing is past the line, it'd go back quick.

OldGuy wrote:
Made the mistake of buying a WD My Cloud Drive being told I could access
it remotely as I would any drive. Locally, on my LAN, I can map it to a
drive.

But you cannot, according to WD technical support, remotely map to a
drive letter.
You have to copy / past through their My Cloud App.
That seems really stupid to me.

All the stuff is there on the laptop so that the My Cloud App can
access, so why cannot they write code to connect Windows Explored via a
drive map reference.

Does anybody know anything about this?
Is there a cloud drive that can do drive mapping? Seagate ?? etc.

I need to run a kiosk type app, no user intervention, and send small
files to the My Cloud Drive as the app needs.

WD does have a smart phone icon like a drop box so it is does that sort
of thing on a smart phone, Android.


"AES128 in transit..."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/20513...l-dropbox.html

I don't know what Windows File Sharing uses for its strongest
encryption option (for usage over raw Internet in an NSA era).
You'd have to look that up.

http://www.howtogeek.com/school/wind...g/lesson3/all/

"By default, Windows uses 128-bit encryption
... with a dated operating system... 40 or 56-bit encryption."

The other thing the My Cound App solves, is the DDNS problem. It
could be, that the My Cloud drive contacts WD and "registers itself".
Then, when you're using your Android from McDonalds parking lot,
and you wish to pull a file from My Cloud, your Android also contacts
the same WD registration server. The WD registration server
gives the My Cloud App the IP address of your own private server.
Then the transfer takes place with AES128 encryption.

For a PC running remotely, I don't see a reason they couldn't
integrate that with Explorer. Have a small applet to accept your
credentials, and once the DDNS busting phase is complete, have
the drive mapped locally.

If you can solve the Dynamic DNS problem yourself, do port forwarding
on your home router, I don't see a problem setting up a
connection. For example, my ISP offers "static address"
for $5 a month over the cost of regular dynamically addressed
broadband. With the static address, I buy my own domain
"paulshouse.com" and DNS contains a mapping from "paulshouse.com"
to the static address I got from the ISP. That would be an
example of "solving the registration server problem". Then,
sitting in McDonalds, I could use \\paulshouse... kind of
addressing. That would be the basic idea. I don't know
all the details, but it sounds theoretically possible. The
My Cloud box shouldn't really be able to tell the
difference between "computer in the house" accessing it,
versus "Surface Pro 3 at McDonalds" accessing it.

While any company could "get up to mischief" with this
sort of software, lets hope the packets coming from
your file server at home, come directly from "paulshouse.com"
and not from "cdn.wdc.com". In other words, unlike other
companies, not making a copy of everything you transfer.
Not pulling a MITM during the data transfer phase.

Have fun,
Paul

From: "OldGuy"

Made the mistake of buying a WD My Cloud Drive being told I could access
it remotely as I would any drive. Locally, on my LAN, I can map it to a
drive.

But you cannot, according to WD technical support, remotely map to a drive
letter.
You have to copy / past through their My Cloud App.
That seems really stupid to me.

All the stuff is there on the laptop so that the My Cloud App can access,
so why cannot they write code to connect Windows Explored via a drive map
reference.

Does anybody know anything about this?
Is there a cloud drive that can do drive mapping? Seagate ?? etc.

I need to run a kiosk type app, no user intervention, and send small files
to the My Cloud Drive as the app needs.

WD does have a smart phone icon like a drop box so it is does that sort of
thing on a smart phone, Android.


It can be done. However not easily and there are security risks.

It can be done via Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning, aka; WebDAV.
Hint: RTFM & http://community.wd.com

For example:
Microsoft's Sysinternals' web site is WebDAV compliant.
http://live.sysinternals.com/

The Sysinternals' WebDAV UNC is

\\live.sysinternals.com\DavWWWRoot\

net use p: \\live.sysinternals.com\DavWWWRoot

There is also a SSL WebDAV UNC variant

\\live.sysinternals.com@ssl\DavWWWRoot

net use p: \\live.sysinternals.com@ssl\DavWWWRoot

You have technical hurdles to overcome such as understanding the underlying
princples and IP implementation, security and authentication and the LAN/WAN
barrier.

The rest is your homework.


--
Dave
Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

On 5/7/2015 7:30 PM, OldGuy wrote:
Made the mistake of buying a WD My Cloud Drive being told I could access
it remotely as I would any drive. Locally, on my LAN, I can map it to a
drive.

But you cannot, according to WD technical support, remotely map to a
drive letter.
You have to copy / past through their My Cloud App.
That seems really stupid to me.

All the stuff is there on the laptop so that the My Cloud App can
access, so why cannot they write code to connect Windows Explored via a
drive map reference.

Does anybody know anything about this?
Is there a cloud drive that can do drive mapping? Seagate ?? etc.

I need to run a kiosk type app, no user intervention, and send small
files to the My Cloud Drive as the app needs.

WD does have a smart phone icon like a drop box so it is does that sort
of thing on a smart phone, Android.

I have a Dlink router with a USB port. When I first set it up, it
seemed that I had to go through the proprietary software.

However I found I could open it from the Network Resources. When I
mapped network address to a network drive to a letter on the computer I
could access it from the drive letter.

Page 36 of the instruction manual shows quiet clearly that you can map the My
Cloud drive as a network share to a drive letter.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/librar...779-705103.pdf

This is for the local PC sitting on the LAN, not a remote PC.
Big difference.
I have done this for the PC on the LAN.

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I have a Dlink router with a USB port. When I first set it up, it seemed
that I had to go through the proprietary software.

However I found I could open it from the Network Resources. When I mapped
network address to a network drive to a letter on the computer I could access
it from the drive letter.

On the LAN.
It does not appear on the Remote PC in My Network Places.

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On the LAN.
It does not appear on the Remote PC in My Network Places.

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I am not worried about security for this.
I can encrypt anything myself and send it along.
WD nor anyone can see the contents.
This is a monitor thing to me.

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On 5/7/2015 9:38 PM, Bob R wrote:
I have a Dlink router with a USB port. When I first set it up, it
seemed that I had to go through the proprietary software.

However I found I could open it from the Network Resources. When I
mapped network address to a network drive to a letter on the computer
I could access it from the drive letter.

On the LAN.
It does not appear on the Remote PC in My Network Places.

Have you checked the manual and found the default address of the WD
drive. You will need that and the default pass word to access the drive.

Have you let the proprietary software run to conclusion to set the drive
for lan acess?

On Thu, 07 May 2015 18:39:46 -0700, OldGuy wrote:


On the LAN.
It does not appear on the Remote PC in My Network Places.

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Agree

You shouldn't need to be able to access it via a drive letter. If it's on
your LAN, it probably has an IP address. Can you access it that way? I would
expect that you can access it by its IP both locally and remotely.

Keith Nuttle wrote:
On 5/7/2015 9:38 PM, Bob R wrote:
I have a Dlink router with a USB port. When I first set it up, it
seemed that I had to go through the proprietary software.

However I found I could open it from the Network Resources. When I
mapped network address to a network drive to a letter on the computer
I could access it from the drive letter.

On the LAN.
It does not appear on the Remote PC in My Network Places.

Have you checked the manual and found the default address of the WD
drive. You will need that and the default pass word to access the drive.

Have you let the proprietary software run to conclusion to set the drive
for lan acess?

Shouldn't it get an address via DHCP from the router it is connected to ?

I'd look in the router, in the DHCP current status table, and
see if the mapping info is sitting there. My router has such
a DHCP table, and the names given the Windows installs
show up in that list.

In lieu of that, you can try a sequential ping search, ping known
devices on the LAN and figure it out from there.

You shouldn't have to do what I did with a broken $300 router here -
namely, sequential IP address search of the entire IPV4, in the
faint hope the stupid box would respond. The target range
of addresses (possible values) should be pretty small for
a home LAN.

Paul

OldGuy wrote in :

Made the mistake of buying a WD My Cloud Drive being told I could
access it remotely as I would any drive. Locally, on my LAN, I can map
it to a drive.

But you cannot, according to WD technical support, remotely map to a
drive letter.
You have to copy / past through their My Cloud App.
That seems really stupid to me.


What was really stupid was buying into the concept of "the cloud". The
whole original idea of the PC was to get away from that.

On 08 May 2015 05:14:38 GMT, Zak W wrote:

What was really stupid was buying into the concept of "the cloud". The
whole original idea of the PC was to get away from that.

If you mean the cloud in general then I submit that it's hard to have
access to say for example a 100GB of storage from almost anywhere, on
any one of several different devices, that may use different OSs,
devices which may have as little as 4GB of internal storage and
couldn't possibly hold all that data internally, using only a PC.
Personally I find the cloud very handy. YMMV.

On Thu, 07 May 2015 23:11:27 -0700, J0HNS0N wrote:

On 08 May 2015 05:14:38 GMT, Zak W wrote:

What was really stupid was buying into the concept of "the cloud". The
whole original idea of the PC was to get away from that.

If you mean the cloud in general then I submit that it's hard to have
access to say for example a 100GB of storage from almost anywhere, on
any one of several different devices, that may use different OSs,
devices which may have as little as 4GB of internal storage and
couldn't possibly hold all that data internally, using only a PC.
Personally I find the cloud very handy. YMMV.

You can easily do all of that with a PC.

The advantages of letting someone else do it for you is that they probably
have a much faster upstream Internet connection (so you can access your data
faster) and they get to be responsible for all of the admin tasks. In
exchange for that, they get to take some of your money.

WD seems to have realized the sentiments against cloud storage, so they've
packaged an ultra small PC with a hard drive and a NIC. Plug it in and the
dedicated PC makes the drive available on the network, and now you have your
own cloud storage. From a LAN perspective, it's little more than a NAS, but
if you enable remote access it becomes (personal) cloud storage.

I skipped a few details, but the point is that you can do it with a PC.