WD My Cloud EX2100 Dual Bay 8TB NAS Review

Performance Summary:  The WD My Cloud EX2100 is a solid, polished product that should appeal to hardcore data mongers as well as budding wannabes. It's great to see WD continue to improve this series of devices, and with the EX2100 it has been able to deliver better performance than the EX2 at a very affordable price point. This is an extremely well-designed product, with intuitive controls, a plethora of configuration options, great performance, and excellent pricing. It feels like WD has hit all the right notes this time around, making the EX2100 a supremely easy to use NAS for virtually any type of user. 

Like the My Cloud drives that came before it, the EX2100 is simple to setup--you just need to plug it in and it's practically ready to go. The files are available from any PC, SmartPhone or tablet, and it is really handy having terabytes of "cloud storage" that you don't need to pay a monthly fee to maintain. Not to mention, you're not trusting them to anyone else but yourself. WD delivers on the promise of having a "personal cloud," and we dig the redundancy built into this device via the default RAID 1 setup. You will still need to backup the contents of the EX2100 unless you like to live semi-dangerously, and thankfully WD provides both onsite and offsite options to do just that. It should be relatively trivial to buy a second EX2100 and link it via Ethernet, or set it up remotely and have it become an offsite backup unit if you're so inclined.

The EX2100 is an attractive solution for content creators and small business owners who are frequent travelers and need access to a large selection of files while on the road. Dropbox and the other services provide this as well but can be expensive, and Dropbox requires the files to be synced locally, and not all laptops can hold a few terabytes of data. Plus not everyone likes having all of their files in someone else's data center. At least, with the My Cloud, you know exactly where the files reside at any given time.

Overall there were a few hiccups with the WD management software, and though its polished and easy to use we still stumbled occasionally. None of that detracted from what was an otherwise very satisfying experience with this easy-to-use NAS device. We love the data redundancy, ease of operation, and affordable price. We have a few nitpicks, but were otherwise very happy with this network-attached storage device and its operation. Anyone needing 24/7 access to a large selection of files should seriously consider the EX2100 or the four-bay EX4100 as their next NAS. It's very simple to use, offers great performance and features, and is competitively priced. We honestly can't think of anything else we would ask for in a home-based NAS drive that isn't already in here.