This post is sponsored by Western Digital.
I know that your mother taught you that sharing was a nice thing to do. I’m the youngest of four kids, and we had to share a lot. Lucky for my siblings and I, we get along great, and even now we still want to share with each other. Now that we all live in different states, sharing has taken on a new meaning. We want to share videos, photos, and even movies and TV shows!
Sharing Vacation Photos
Every other summer my siblings and I get together with our families. We change up the location each time so that it’s always close to one of us. Most recently we went to Bend, OR. We rent out a huge house and we spend the whole time laughing and generally having a wonderful time. These trips are always SO much fun and we take a whole lot of pictures and videos. When we get home, it used to be an ordeal trying to share these images with each other. Some of us reach our space limit with cloud services like Dropbox or we don’t all use the same cloud service, and we aren’t able to share all of the images everyone took during the trip.
I just received a My Cloud Home personal storage solution from Western Digital, and this has been the perfect location for everyone to upload all of their pictures, without worrying about paying for additional space, or incompatibility issues. I created a folder for our most recent trip to Bend, OR and shared the link with my siblings. From there they could upload their own images. These images and videos will now live on my hard drive inside my house for everyone so they can download their favorites or check them out from any location.
Sharing Movies
What we really love to do, though, is discuss movies and TV Shows. We are always sharing what shows we are currently into, or what movies that the rest of the group ABSOLUTELY HAS TO SEE. We all like to purchase movies and TV Shows, and there are a LOT of them that aren’t available on streaming services like Netflix. You can each set up your own personal Netflix with the My Cloud Home too by activating the Plex server already installed on the device!
Plex is an application that can be installed on a computer or a device like the My Cloud Home. When you rip the DVD’s and Blu-Rays that you own to your Plex server you can have a repository of your entire collection that you can view from any device like your phone, Roku or connected TV. You never have to deal with ruined discs again when your children can just pick the movie they want to watch from Plex, instead of trying to handle the disc.
What is really great about Plex, however, is the fact that you can share your entire library with anyone. They need a Plex account as well, but once they have signed up for a free account, they can start watching anything in your library. If you get all of your siblings to set up their own Plex library, you can double or triple or quadruple your media collection in a matter of minutes.
Rest Easy
There are two versions of the My Cloud Home Solutions, the My Cloud Home Duo is the one I prefer. The Duo has 2 hard drives built into the device to provide redundancy. If one of the hard drives fails, you can replace the hard drive and not lose a minute of access to your files. With the other model, there is only one hard drive inside the system. If you have a backup of this external hard drive elsewhere, then it shouldn’t be a problem for you. With the My Cloud Home Duo, though, you won’t have to worry about backing it up. Hard drives do fail, and relying on one is just asking for trouble. I love that I know I won’t be without the files I’m sharing with my siblings, and they are safely on a device that I control.
You can pick up a 4 TB My Cloud Home Duo for around $300, or for half the cost you can purchase the one drive version at Best Buy. If you are already paying for cloud services, this could be a great option to save money in the long run, or you can use this device for extra organization and protection in conjunction with your current service.
This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive compensation if you make a purchase using the links.
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