WD 2go Reviewed

Introduction

Our recent SmallNetBuilder review of WD's My Book Live Duo noted that the company had replaced its MioNet remote access system with a new "personal cloud" approach dubbed WD 2go. I was never a fan of MioNet, finding it too clunky and requiring paid upgrade to do much of anything useful. WD 2go is a completely refreshed approach, offering easy setup and access via web portal and iOS and Android apps.

Like Pogoplug and Iomega's Cloud Edition NASes, WD 2go takes a "private cloud" approach. This just means that files stay on your personally owned and operated device, which is the "private" part. The "cloud" part is comprised of a hosted web portal at a fixed URL and software in the NAS that stay linked so that you don't have to worry about UPnP, port forwarding, dynamic DNS or any of the stuff that makes non-techies' eyes glaze over.

Note that WD 2go supports only My Book Live NASes. Older My Book World and ShareSpace products won't work.

App Access

WD has made it very easy to enable access through its web portal and via the iOS and Android apps. Authorization is granted separately for these two methods, but the methodology is the same. Figure 1 shows the start of adding access for an iOS or Android device. You select a user (in this case the default admin account), then hit the Get Code button.

Figure 1: Mobile access account add

This generates a 12 digit code (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Mobile access code

You then download the app onto your iOS or Android device and enter that code, shown in Figure 3 for an iPad.

Figure 3: Mobile access code

When the code is accepted, the shared folders you have access to will be shown (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Shared folders in the iOS app