The Western Digital My Cloud EX2 is a 2-bay NAS, and most users are going to use it in a RAID-1 configuration. Hence, we performed all our expansion / rebuild testing as well as power consumption evaluation with the unit configured in RAID-1.

Last October, Western Digital launched the My Cloud . This device was essentially a network connected version of their My Book line of external hard drives, but with Internet connectivity and apps that could reach back to the My Cloud even when you were away from home.

As one of the biggest names in the storage industry, Western Digital doesn't need much of an introduction. Founded in 1970, the company got its start by manufacturing calculator chips.

Easy to setup and manage; Accessible from anywhere using desktop and mobile apps; Two tool-less; hot-swap drive bays; Supports RAID 0; 1; JBOD and Spanning modes; Integrated file; FTP; backup and P2P download servers; Supports USB; LAN/WAN and cloud backups; Twonky and iTunes media servers,...

Mediocre write speeds

Even though the My Cloud EX2 uses slightly beefed up hardware, the performance results don't really show too much of a difference compared to the EX4. The EX2 does have a slight edge over the EX4 on USB 3.0 backup and on iSCSI, but those aren't really the features that most buyers care about.

Western Digital's My Cloud EX2 NAS fits a niche between WD's consumer-targeted My Cloud and its four-bay business storage solution the My Cloud EX4 . The EX2 is as easy to set up as the My Cloud home NAS, and it incorporates some of the advanced capabilities of the EX4.The EX2 has the same clean,...

Clean industrial design; Easy to set up; Offers simple remote access configuration via the My Cloud service; Excellent read speeds

Average write speeds; Plastic handle to pull drives out of bay is flimsy and easy to break; Hard drives hot to the touch after several hours of system uptime

The WD My Cloud EX2 is the newest addition to WD's family of NAS devices and is designed specifically for small businesses, pro users, workgroups and anyone else who are serious about a reliable way to save, share, back up, stream, and manage up to 8TB of data.

Very easy to set up; Good price for its class; Great for the home with its full-featured suite of media center apps

Performance lags other 2-bay NASs

Western Digital's My Cloud family of products over the last few months have been pushing the door wide open for the everyday user, giving the freedom to access their data quickly and easily from anywhere in the world.

RAID1 protection out of the box; Low power consumption; Stylish design; Easy to set up and manage; Cost effective; Remote access from anywhere in the world; Near-silent operation

Local network performance not as high as purpose-built solutions

I found WD My Clound EX2 and was happy because I bought this was a great idea and a perfect solution. I found the product has several problems that makes this product useless. The problem is the following.

None

Not been able to access the unit; when you have access the unit crashes and need to be restart

The WD My Cloud EX2 is a well-priced dual-bay RAID NAS drive for us sharing media around your home or data across a small business. Here's our WD My Cloud EX2 review.

The WD My Cloud EX2 is designed for prosumers (such as avid amateur and semi-pro photographers and videographers) who want the convenience of cloud storage, but who don't want to store files on servers outside their physical control.