Western Digital, the company responsible for the most popular personal cloud hardware and service, is making some big changes to its My Cloud OS and My Cloud Mirror hardware that should make the service quite a bit more appealing to the masses. These updates add some key functionality that makes the personal cloud service function in a way that is far more similar to public cloud services like DropBox or OneDrive.
The major feature added to My Cloud OS is called Sync. It lets users choose specific directories on their PC and have them automatically sent to the drive that’s connected to their router, which is serving as their personal cloud. When the user makes changes to files or folders, they will automatically be uploaded to My Cloud and synced to other connected devices.
This new feature makes My Cloud function more smoothly, as users don’t need to manually upload files they want synced. Like Dropbox and other cloud services, users can get access to their files and documents on smartphones as well on other computers.
In keeping with the theme of improved functionality, Western Digital is also adding photo syncing on mobile devices. Pictures can be uploaded to the My Cloud OS connected drive as soon as they’re taken. There’s also a new feature that lets users collect and share photos in full resolution.
Western Digital is also improving its SDK to allow developers to tap into the heart of the My Cloud devices with apps. It has already partnered with Milestone Surveillance, Plex, and Adobe, and it thinks that its new open-source standard will attract more developers than the previous version.
On the hardware side, Western Digital is also announcing its My Cloud Mirror 2, a new version of its router-connected hardware that actually features two drives for redundancy.
The update to the OS will be launched on September 21 to all existing My Cloud users. The new My Cloud Mirror 2 hardware will be available on September 30.
