Table of Contents
This guide will help you to create a secure cloud backup of your My Cloud Home device using Polycloud by CrowdStorage. It requires you to have a desktop or laptop computer which you can connect to your My Cloud Home Device. If you would like to explore other backup options please contact Western Digital Support at https://support-en.wd.com/app/products/product-detail/p/1369
This guide has three main steps:
1. Connect your My Cloud Home to your computer.
2. Create a Polycloud account.
3. Install Duplicati, a free backup application, to back up your My Cloud Home to Polycloud.
We have step by step instructions for how to do each of these below.
Step 1: Connect your My Cloud Home to your PC or MAC
- Make sure that your My Cloud Home is powered on and connected to the internet
- Make sure your PC / Mac is on the same wifi network as your My Cloud Home
- Make sure you have installed the latest version of the WD Discovery App
- If you need to install the app you can download and install it at https://home.mycloud.com/apps
- Once you click on this link, download the desktop app by clicking on this download link:
- Once you have the app installed on your computer open it and make sure that you have connected it to your My Cloud Home by Signing in to your account
- Once you have signed in, check that you are able to find your My Cloud Home Drive in your file explorer (PC) or Finder (Mac)
Windows
Mac
Step 2: Create a Polycloud Account
- Go to https://polycloud.crowdstorage.com/signup to create a Polycloud account
- Polycloud is a distributed cloud storage service offered by CrowdStorage. It only costs $0.004 per GB per month to use. So if you are storing 300 GB of data on your My Cloud home it will only cost your $1.20 per month to back it up, or $4 per TB per month. You can learn more about Polycloud at CrowdStorage.com
- Input your information and click “Start your Free Trial”
- Check your email for a message from CrowdStorage and confirm your address by clicking on “Finish Signing Up”
- This will take you to a page where you can create your password, and read and accept our terms of service
- You will now be asked to enter your payment details. You will not be charged unless you use more that 10 GB of data
- Now you can create your first bucket and start storing your data in the cloud first click the “Create Bucket Button”
- Name your bucket (see our Bucket naming guidelines if you need help)
- if you would like to create folders within your bucket you can click on the folder icon with a plus at the top and type in the name of the folder you want to create
- Next, to generate your access keys, in order to use our S3 compatible API, click the “Generate Access Key” button. This information will be used when connecting Polycloud to Duplicati
- A message will appear informing you that we will generate and download a text file with your access key information. Once these keys are downloaded they will no longer be available from CrowdStorage, for security reasons. So be sure to store them in a safe place. If you do lose them you can generate new keys, but you will then need to update all of your 3rd party applications with the new credentials
- Click “GENERATE” to generate and download your access keys
- You will now be able to see your Access Key Configuration Information and also a copy will be downloaded as a text file. Save this information for use in later steps
Step 3: Install Duplicati 2.0 and use it to back up your My Cloud Home to Polycloud
- Duplicati 2.0 is free software that allows you to back up devices to the Cloud
- Go to https://www.duplicati.com/download
- Follow the instructions to download and install the software for your platform (i.e. Windows, Mac, other)
- Run Duplicati 2.0
- Click “Add Backup”
- Select “Configure a new backup” and click “Next”
- Name your backup
- Select Encryption and create a passphrase if desired (Polycloud data is all encrypted by default) and click “Next”
- On the “Storage type” dropdown select “S3 Compatible”
- Check “Use SSL”
- Under server select “Customer server URL”
- In the Custom S3 endpoint box that appears on the right enter “polycloud.crowdapis.com”
- Next to “Bucket name” enter the name of one of the buckets you created while setting up your Polycloud account
- Leave Bucket region and Storage class as default
- Enter a path or subfolder within the bucket if desired otherwise leave blank
- For AWS Access ID add the “Key” that was downloaded in the text file when you setup your Polycloud account
- For AWS Access Key add the “Secret” that was downloaded in the text file when you setup your Polycloud account
- For Client library select “Amazon AWS SDK”
- Click “Test connection”
- If it asks you to append your ID to your bucket select “No”
- It should say connection successful then click “Next”
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- For source data scroll down and find the drive associated with your My Cloud Home (in our example it is the Z drive and says (network) next to to. You can check which drive it is in your File explorer or Finder
- Click “Next”
- For the schedule if you would like you can schedule an automatic backup of your device as you see fit then click “Next”
- Adjust any options if you desire to but we recommend to keep the default settings
- Click “Save”
- If you would like to you can click “Run Now” to start immediately to back up your device
- You can check your Polycloud account to ensure that the files are safely stored in the cloud.
If you have any other questions or issues, please contact Support@crowdstorage.com