Gadgetory

time and time again every comments from experienced PC users claiming the network attached storage device is a way of a price they can build their own for a lot less they're right about one thing they can build their own for a lot less and it might even end up being a great deal more powerful there's even products such as the silverstone ds3 80 chassis you which are designed for those willing to talk with their own ass build a popular operating system choices FreeNAS a free open-source operating system based on freebsd in the open ZFS file system so why isn't everyone doing this I mean they clearly aren't this company's such a Synology and QNAP wouldn't have risen to power there are now a dozen other companies competing for their slice of the network attached storage pie the reason is the building configuring and maintaining your own ass is a lot of work it requires a great deal of computer and networking knowledge on the other hand my Synology ds1 five one five was so easy to set up anyone with basic PC experience would have found a breeze this is what you're paying for a well-thought-out and refined installation process along with an extremely easy to use yet very powerful operating system still as an ever-growing number of companies into the NASA arena it's becoming increasingly difficult to charge a premium for the operating software nakkeera now selling their readiness 102 for just $100 in diskless form an incredible price for a tube a device that said the readiness operating system is severely lacking when compared to the competition the same can be said for buffalos I XEL d-link and TRENDnet there is one emerging force in the NASA market and surprisingly I'm yet to check out any of their products despite using their hard drives and all my devices Western Digital has been developing NASA products for quite a few years now into the my cloud moniker looking at their lineup I feel anyone will be hard-pressed to build their own ass for less even if you are good second-hand shop up the my cloud 2 terabyte model sells for just 135 dollars and includes a 2 terabyte hard drive while the 4 terabyte model can be had for a little under $200 even there my cloud business models can be had for less than $500 with 4 terabytes worth of pre-configured storage looking at past reviews it does appear as though the my cloud series has been battling with performance issues and functionality beyond basic NASA tasks the cloudy XOR expert series was a step in the right direction offering greater performance and dis less options for greater flexibility earlier this year Western Digital announced they are updating their prosumer portfolio with the my cloud ext ultra I'm through the faster dual-core processor and more memory the FC ultra would be superior in every way as was the case of previous Western Digital NAS devices the x2 ultra will be leveraging the red family of hard drives which are purpose-built for non-stop performance in 24/7 NASA environments this new series is available in sizes from disc lists to 12 terabyte capacities the Western Digital red drives are also powered by Nass where 3.0 technology to improve drive reliability and minimize data corruption due to power loss or disruptions at its heart you'll find a marvel Armada 385 dual-core 1.3 gigahertz system-on-chip which is a capable budget option that can also be found in the Synology DiskStation ds2 1:6 however where's the DSP 1:6 is armed with just 512 megabytes of RAM the ESU ultra gets a beefier 1 gigabyte memory capacity the x2 ultra features no front panel connectivities those wanting to connect external storage life to do so from the back where you'll find just 2 USB 3 ports and a gigabit network connection needless to say the x2 ultra is extremely light on connectivity internally the drives amount of vertically drawing air in through the bottom and dissipating through the top panel the natural drive air is aided by a small fan and under load it does make quite a bit of noise on top of the unit built into the ventilator panel as a thumb-sized indentation which looks a bit like a power button you might find on a pc case the irony being the x2 ultra doesn't actually have a power button this button releases a catch which allows the top panel to open on a hinge model I have for review which is a pair of 2 terabyte red drives which are pre-installed and configured this meant once all the necessary cables were connected the unit powered on and after around 30 seconds could be detected on the network it was then simply a matter of double-clicking on the my cloud x2 ultra which would launch the default web browser and direct you to the my cloud OS I really didn't know what to expect when jumping into the my cloud operating system so many of these cheaper Ness alternatives are plagued by horrible software still this is Western Digital so I was hoping for something half polished what I found was a very basic operating system that supported a few apps to make it a little less bland the user interface is well laid out and despite looking very boring it functions quite well I certainly wouldn't describe it as powerful the basic stuff like creating users and shared folders was quick and easy to access and provided all the necessary options the cloud access feature which enables a smartphone or tablet to access the NASS worked well and was easy to configure to the default apps are extremely basic and only included a download of the PAPR ftp and HTTP connections as well as a rudimentary web file viewer there are around a dozen other apps that can be downloaded and installed the most noteworthy which include plex media server WordPress PHP BB and drop-offs finally you'll find a general settings menu which allows for alterations to be made to the network settings and media settings along with a few other typical options such as Drive hibernation here are a few quick file transfer tests uploading a large file saw the my cloud x2 ultra maps out the network connection at around 110 megabytes per second I should point out the download performance was exactly the same as if you give it internet connection again causing a throughput bottleneck when moving thousands of smaller mixed files to and from the my cloud x2 ultra we saw an average of 40 megabytes per second which is respectable some of the fastest for bein ass devices only averaged around 50 to 60 megabytes per second uploading the Just Cause 3 game files which weighed in at 50 1.1 gigabytes to 507 seconds which meant the my cloud x2 ultra sustained 100 megabytes per second in this test over the almost nine minutes it took to complete value for money the Western Digital my cloud x2 ultra is both good and bad well maybe not bad but not good depending on your requirements let me try and explain before you requires an affordable Nass device with basic functionality and decent performance then the ext ultra looks very promising for $350 the 4 terabyte model will cost one hundred ninety dollars more than the displace version so we slightly cheaper to buy the drive separately though it might not be worth it as the pre-configured versions come back by 3-year warranty while the disclose model only comes with a two-year warranty of course Western Digital offers a three year warranty and all of their drives that doesn't do you much good if the HP ultra cell fails out of warranties as good as the right series drives are they always seem to be overkill what's essentially a budget 106 villain asks the Itachi death star 7k to terabyte drives $50 each might be a better pairing for example the total cost would come to just $260 a 26% saving still though seeking an out-of-the-box solution the pre-configured x2 ultras are hard to go by the Synology ds2 1/6 that I mentioned earlier in the review features similar hardware but enjoys a vastly superior operating system still all those extra software features come at a price as the ds2 1/6 costs 270 dollars in disclose form as we just pointed out it is possible to configure the x2 ultra with 4 terabytes of storage for less for around the same money the ds2 1/6 SC can be had the marble I'm outta 370 dual-core 800 megahertz processor is painfully slow this lack of horsepower makes many of Synology awesome software features unusable so although Western Digital does have a long way to go if they wish to match the capability of devices from Synology and QNAP they can safely rely on competitive pricing to keep them in the game for now as much as I enjoy the convenience of the pre-configured 4 terabyte model I think the disillusion with a pair of budget drives might be a smarter choice for this product in a nutshell the my cloud ext ultra is plenty fast for home users it's easy to set up and use and the quality of the software is good just by being fairly basic and paying for your buck there really isn't anything better thanks for joining me for another product review I'm your host is always matt and i look forward to seeing you guys next time you