How to Back Up Your My Cloud Home Using Polycloud

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”

• 

• 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