Western Digital (WD) has unveiled the newest member of its MyCloud family of external storage devices, the EX4. Billed as a high performance network attached storage (NAS) drive, WD is aiming the new model at 'prosumers' and small business owners looking to store and backup larger quantities of data to a personal cloud.
The device, which is available in sizes ranging from 8TB to 16TB, gives owners access to data stored locally over a network or the internet either through a browser or using third-party apps.
It's equipped with RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 for redundancy in the event of data loss, and the machine comes with WD's SmartWare Pro data backup software for PC (Mac users have the option of backing up to an Apple Time Capsule).
Its hot swappable drives can be replaced without the need for special toolkits, and on the back you'll find a number of connectivity options including USB 3.0, a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports and dual power connections for redundancy. Inside is a 2.0 GHz Marvell CPU, 512MB main memory and 256MB flash memory.
Business boost
The EX4 is being offered with a number of business features, including Active Directory to connect the device to a company domain, iSCI, virtual folders (DFS) which allows multiple MyCloud devices to connect together through a virtual folder, and volume encryption for security.
The drive is available now in various forms. An 'unpopulated' version (one with no included drives) will set you back £319 (around $510, or AU$548), which rises to £679 (around $1,085, or AU$1,167) for 8TB (4 x 2TB drives).
At the top end, a 12TB (4 x 3 TB drives) drive costs £799 (around $1,277, or AU$1,373), which rises to £999 (around $1,597, or AU$1,718). All models are compatible with WD's mobile apps for iOS and Android devices that let you view (but not edit) documents and other files stored on the device.
- Let's hope OS X 10.9 Mavericks will play nicely with the EX4
