Some would argue that, these days, it’s just as important to backup our mobile (camera) devices for the very reason we backup our regular digital photographs. Here’s my take on doing just that with my review of the My Cloud Mirror.
MyCloud Mirror Personal Cloud Storage on Amazon
Even though I have my camera with me most of the time, I still have my iPhone (or your Android or Windows thing or heck, even your Blackberry) with me about 99.8% of the time. That’s maybe more than most people as my 9 to 5 is social media and photography, so I tend to have the phone near, and as a result, I take a lot of photographs with the thing.
It’s the iPhone 6 Plus, it has a half decent camera and as a result I take a lot of photos, videos, time lapse sequences, slow motion videos, etc. The bottom line is, I use it to create a LOT of content, and I know a lot of you guys do too. The theme with my other storage and backup related articles here on dPS has been “don’t lose stuff when you don’t need to!” and really, the same goes for your phone. You use it to create memories, even if you can’t print those memories out at A1 size (23.4 x 33.1″), they are still moments that you might like to remember. (Or they’re just photographs of every coffee you’ve ever had and really, you should just stop that!*)
As ever, without slapping down a whole page of technical jargon that you really don’t understand, I shall explain the WD MyCloud Mirror in the easiest way I can. You unbox it, plug it into power and to your network, (Cat5 cable between your MyCloud and your internet modem / router) follow the configuration instructions, and within minutes (unless you really are very very bad at things with buttons and knobs) you will have a storage drive that is both connected to your computer on your home network / wireless, and you will have a storage “cloud” that is available to you on your phone (apps available in Google Play and iTunes app store) and via any internet connected browser.
Maybe the skeptic in you is saying, “but I still have to remember to actually backup my phone!” Actually, and you knew I’d say that, it does it automatically (make sure your app settings are right) so you can shoot on your phone, and have your photos automatically transferred to your MyCloud Mirror (you control if it does it all the time or only when you’re connected via Wifi to avoid crazy mobile data bills).
My ultimate test of the WD MyCloud Mirror was on a recent trip to Fiji for a photography workshop. I was using a Fijian sim card in my iPhone and had wifi at random hours of the day. I set the MyCloud app to upload my iPhone content when on Wifi, and that’s exactly what it did – seamlessly! My wife could navigate to a website back in Melbourne and see what I’d photographed on my phone, and show my boys where I was – it was great. Now, you can do that using a camera, card reader, and a laptop with wifi (or a hundred other ways) but for those moments that I simply whipped out my phone and snapped a memory, they were preserved and immediately available for others to see (or to not see, depending on your security settings, obviously).
Some specs for you to wrap your head around
- Keep your content in one, double-safe place
- Get abundant, dual-drive storage with access from anywhere
- Save everything with twice the protection using Mirror Mode (RAID 1-default)
- Easily transfer to and from Dropbox™ and other cloud accounts
You can use the MyCloud Mirror with the following
- Windows® 8.1 or earlier, Windows 7, Windows Vista® or Windows XP (32 bit) SP 3 operating systems
- Mac® OS® X Mavericks, Mountain Lion™, Lion™ or Snow Leopard® operating systems
- DLNA®/UPnP® devices for streaming
- Router with Internet connection
Supported browsers:
- Internet Explorer® 8 or higher
- Safari® 6 or higher
- Firefox® 21 or higher
- Google Chrome™ 27 or later on supported Windows and Mac OS platforms
What’s that about a mirror?
You may also have picked up on the word mirror in the name of the MyCloud, it does indeed have two disks in it and it mirrors your data. While you’re backing it up from your phone, you’re also making a redundant copy of it onto the second drive, so if disk number #1 should fail, disk #2 will still have all of your duck-faced selfies (be honest, who doesn’t love a duck-faced selfie). Here’s a picture of that happening, just perchance I’ve confused you with my techno-babble.
In summary, I totally love the WD MyCloud Mirror (I have the 4/2 (mirrored) TB version). I can’t recommend it enough for those of you that are half serious about your phone photography, or even just half serious about storage and content access while you’re anywhere with an internet connection.
The WD MyCloud Mirror has been online for three months to test its reliability. It’s been online, and available all of that time, without a hiccup. I was sent the unit for test and review purposes, and will always give an unbiased opinion of a product. I award the MyCloud Mirror Five stars for simplicity in setup and usage, as well as (three months) constant reliability.
*there’s a good chance that sentence was about, and directed at me 
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