The Western Digital My Cloud EX4 Launch Event

Today, we were invited to the official launch of the Western Digital My Cloud EX4 NAS at Aloft @ KL Sentral. This was a rather important event for Western Digital, and they brought along a big gun - WD APAC Branded Marketing's Senior Regional Marketing Manager, Albert Chang.

Network-Attached Storage (NAS) systems may not be the sexiest hardware as far as personal computing goes, but they are actually one of the most rapidly expanding segments of the personal computing market. Many tech-savvy users not only want a networked home, but also a standalone storage solution that allows them to share their digital media with their family and even access on-the-go. So it's no wonder Western Digital is focusing on this market segment.

Here are some pictures from the event today :

	Ethan Wong from Roots Asia got the ball rolling...
WD Malaysia's Sales Manager for Branded Products, Susan Chong, introducing the new My Cloud EX4	WD APAC Branded Marketing's Senior Regional Marketing Manager, Albert Chang, giving us the details of the new WD My Cloud EX4 personal cloud storage solution.
WD South Asia Region's Senior Staff Field Application Engineer, Mike Goh, explaining the advantages of the WD Red drives.	Albert Chang and Susan Chong showing off the new WD My Cloud EX4 NAS systems.

And here is their official press release :

19 November 2013 – WD®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company and a world leader in storage solutions for the connected life, today introduced WD My Cloud™ EX4, a high-performance four-bay network attached storage (NAS) solution for creative professionals, prosumers, workgroups and anyone looking for a reliable way to save, share, back up, stream and manage massive amounts of digital data.

"We believe that there's no place like home for the cloud," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD's branded products and consumer electronics groups. "Everyone is inundated with thousands of digital files scattered across multiple computers and mobile devices, and controlling that chaos is a challenge. The new WD My Cloud EX4 is an affordable and reliable solution for customers to control that chaos, providing high performance, manageable storage capabilities with access to all of their files anywhere, anytime."

Featuring the category leading WD Red™ line of hard drives specifically designed for home and small office NAS systems, WD My Cloud EX4 customers enjoy ultimate reliability from the trusted name in storage. WD Red drives are powered by NASware™ 2.0 technology, which improves drive reliability and protects customer data in the event of a power loss or disruption. Additionally, WD Red hard drives feature 3D Active Balance Plus, an enhanced balance control technology that significantly improves overall drive performance and reliability.    

WD My Cloud EX4 provides several capacity options, allowing customers to choose from a drive-less enclosure that allows customers to customize their capacity and add additional drives as their library of digital content grows, or an 8 TB, 12 TB or 16 TB model. With Easy-Slide-Drive technology, WD My Cloud EX4 allows customers to easily install or hot-swap drives in seconds, without the need for a screwdriver, toolkit or trays. Additionally, customers can attach compatible USB 3.0 hard drives to the USB expansion ports on the WD My Cloud EX4 to instantly expand their storage capacity.

Ultimate Data Protection

WD My Cloud EX4 arms users with multiple options to secure digital data from a potential loss by providing RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 or allowing users to select from spanning and JBOD modes for even more options to manage data. Customers can also use their WD My Cloud EX4 to back up all of their computers and devices with WD SmartWare™ Pro software for PC users. Mac users can utilize all the features of Apple® Time Machine® backup software to protect their data. The WD My Cloud EX4 can also backup itself, either to another WD My Cloud EX4 in a different location, or to cloud services such as Amazon S3 and ElephantDrive. To ensure 24/7 data protection and reliability the WD My Cloud EX4 includes redundant power supplies and Ethernet ports.

Advanced Streaming and Serving

WD My Cloud EX4 serves as a home's digital entertainment hub, configurable for up to 16 TB of movies and music that can then be streamed to any DLNA®/UPnP® certified multimedia device such as gaming consoles, smart TVs and WD TV® Live™ media players. The Twonky 7.2, DLNA-certified 1.5 media server and iTunes® server make for simple streaming of large movie and music libraries.

Additionally, the integrated file server, FTP server, backup server and P2P download server provide advanced data serving options for WD My Cloud EX4 users.

Customers can also customize their NAS, monitor system health, manage users and energy saving features with the WD My Cloud EX4 dashboard, as well as use a suite of third party apps, including aMule, Icecast, Joomla!®, phpBB®, phpMyAdmin and SqueezeCenter.

Anywhere Access to WD My Cloud EX4

Available for iOS® and Android™ devices, the WD My Cloud mobile app allows users to view photos, stream video and share, save and manage files from anywhere on their smartphones or tablets. The mobile app makes file sharing and collaborating simple, allowing customers to easily email files, share files as a link, and print and open files with third party apps. The WD My Cloud mobile app integrates major public cloud services so that customers can easily transfer files from their Dropbox™, SkyDrive® and Google Drive™ public cloud accounts.

Price and Availability

WD My Cloud EX4 is distributed by Amble Action Sdn Bhd in Malaysia. MSRP is RM 1,359 (US$ 439) for the drive-less WD My Cloud EX4, RM 2,699 (US$ 869) for 8 TB, RM 3,259 (US$ 1,049) for 12 TB and RM 3,999 (US$ 1,289) for 16 TB. The WD My Cloud mobile app currently is available for download from the App Store and Google Play. WD My Cloud EX4 comes with a two year limited warranty.

Compatibility

WD My Cloud EX4 is compatible with Windows® 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista®, Windows XP, OS X Mavericks™, Mountain Lion™, Lion®, Snow Leopard®, as well as DLNA®/UPnP® enabled devices.

Now, let's take a closer look at the WD My Cloud EX4...

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