My computer's hard disk was bursting at the seams.
Faced with this issue, a sensible person would simply move a bunch of files to a portable USB drive and delete the originals from their PC. After all, the price for a USB drive with a terabyte of memory is right: Brand-name options go for $50 on Amazon.
But I wanted more.
I wanted a home-based cloud backup drive. And yes, it was mostly because a friend has one and raves about it.
For the record, I've long used a cloud backup program called Carbonite, which takes a snapshot of my drive once a day. If my hard disk fails, Carbonite will use the most recent snapshot to restore all the programs and files my hard disk contained on a new drive.
I'm also in the practice of uploading sensitive files like this column (ha!) to SugarSync, another fine cloud program. So really, I'm been pretty well covered and should have been satisfied using an inexpensive USB drive to make backups. But what fun would that have been?
It had been more than three years since I last reviewed the Western Digital My Cloud backup drive. That experience ended with me returning the device because its software was seriously clunky.
Well, now that my experiment's over, I can tell you the software has since gotten slicker, but the drive still requires two software components to work. And while the components initially seemed intuitive, I was unable _ even after several hours on the phone with Western Digital tech support _ to make a backup of my ready-to-burst hard drive.
One tech, thinking the drive might be defective, told me to run a diagnostic test, which took 10 hours and determined that the disk was healthy.
Other techs gruffly taught me how to use the software. As I listened, I wondered why it's necessary to teach anyone how to operate a backup program. Designate which drive is the source. Then designate the backup drive. Not so simple with the My Cloud.
The My Cloud plugs into a router, not to a computer, and you can _ theoretically _ back up several PCs or Macs to the device. And don't get confused over the "cloud" part of the name. Instead of backing up to a server somewhere in North Dakota, where it could be vulnerable to hackers, the Western Digital drive is itself a cloud that can be accessed wherever there's Wi-Fi.
If the backups don't work, as mine didn't, files can be copied directly onto the drive. But remember, the same thing can be done with a simple, $50 drive. The 2-terabyte version of the My Cloud drive costs $140, while an 8-terbyte option costs $300.
There's also a dual-drive model, with which files backed up to the primary drive are also backed up to a second drive. Those drives have a maximum capacity of 16 terabytes and range from $300 to $800.
If those drives get fried, or thieves take them, though, you're seriously out of luck as far as backups are concerned. That's where offsite cloud backups, most of which have redundant servers, can be a better choice.
All that said, the real reason I wanted a My Cloud was to access files on my iPhone.
In my test, the files were there but were gray and couldn't be opened.
So back I went to phone support, which by the way, is free for the first 30 days. The tech gave up on me, so I did some fiddling of my own, resulting in me being able to open some _ but not all _ of my files.
Packaging and returning the My Cloud drive was the easiest part of a dayslong mess.
So now I'm back to copying files on an external hard drive _ the $50 solution. The process is reliable and easy.
How do I access my files when I'm away from home? Easy. I take the portable drive _ or a thumb drive _ with me and view my backups anytime, anywhere on my laptop. No Wi-Fi connection needed. And fact is, I can already view files that were backed up to my real cloud services, Carbonite and SugarSync.
Sometimes "I gotta have it" should be answered with "no you don't."
