WD Launches My Cloud OS 3 & Updated My Cloud Mirror

It’s time to get excited, WD My Cloud users, as WD is soon to roll out My Cloud OS 3 to its family of NAS appliances. Before I talk about that, though, I should point out an interesting fact that WD told me on a call last week. Where personal cloud storage is concerned, WD currently owns half of the market in North America, and 30% worldwide. That’s quite impressive given all of the other companies out there offering similar solutions.

With that kind of success, WD isn’t planning to rest on its laurels. My Cloud OS 3 is going to bring a couple of important features to its supported NASes, including advanced syncing capabilities (ability to sync to and from other PCs, not just the NAS itself), a much improved UI with even easier setup, and a useful photo and video management tool.

A feature that might not be so obvious to those who do update is one that allows you to automatically backup photos from an Android or iOS device over to the My Cloud NAS. In time, this could include the option to delete the photos off of the device after it’s done, but for what I’m sure are obvious reasons, that’s a hard feature to bring out.

Running out of space on a mobile phone is frustrating, but it’s more so when you’re at an event where you’d actually like to take photos. In the event you’re in this scenario, you could take advantage of a service called My Cloud Albums, which will let you quickly create an album that your friends could connect to (whether or not they have a My Cloud themselves), and they could share their photos with you to download later. It’s definitely a niche feature, but it’s a neat one.

Also with My Cloud 3, WD introduces Docker support for app developers. This will allow for a much more secure way to deploy apps on My Cloud, and Milestone, PLEX, and Adobe all have apps that use Docker en route. To the user, the underlying architecture isn’t going to matter, but for app developers, it gives them an easier way to develop for My Cloud.

In addition to this software upgrade, WD has also introduced an updated My Cloud Mirror, one that beefs up the CPU to allow for 1.5-2x faster transfer speeds. The gen 2 Mirror will come in 4TB, 6TB, and 8TB variants, with the family starting out at $309.99.

WD hasn’t said when the Mirror or My Cloud 3 update will land, but it seems safe to say that “very soon” will apply to both.