Bought a WB MyCloud external HDD yesterday, got it home, went to connect it up, Ethernet cable supplied to connect to router, no USB A male to USB A male cable supplied to do the recommended connection to the ‘puter.
Fine, just pop back to Curry’s/PC World and get one. Nope. They don’t stock them! W.T.F!
I had to drive down to Bath and walk around to Maplins to get a cable. Am I wrong in expecting the manufacturer to supply a connecting cable to make the recommended connection? They put in an Ethernet cable, and I’ve got loads of those, but USB A male to male cables are uncommon, I’ve no other device that requires one.

that does seem a bit tight of them not to supply it with the hdd.

i bought an external hdd for my laptop and they had the lead (toshiba 1tb) to go with my toshiba laptop as it only has 455gb.

No, configure it via the ethernet cable and url or download the software as per instructions.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/UM/ENG/4779-705103.pdf

The whole point of it being a ‘cloud’ device is that you connect it to your ADSL router/modem so that you can access it from outside your home network. You’re effectively running the device as a server, and connecting to it from anywhere in the world to access files. Hence the reason it should be connected to your router with an ethernet cable so that it’s on your home network. If you connected it to your home PC with a USB cable, you wouldn’t be able to use this ‘MyCloud’ feature – it would effectively become an expensive portable HDD.

I guess you are unlucky not to have a USB though – I’ve probably got about 10 kicking around – manufacturers nowadays expect people to have spare USB cables, but not ethernet.

So if you want to backup onto this device, you access it on your home network, via the router.

It’s seriously A to A? That’s weird. Is there no other USB connectors on it?

The ‘A’ end is basically a ‘host’ device; that would imply that it’s connecting host to host. I’m not surprised Curry’s don’t stock such a thing.

Are you sure it’s not a host socket for a memory stick or something (dongle, even) ?

(bah, beaten again 😕 )

My Cloud Optimum Data Migration
Follow these steps to migrate a large amount of data (50Gb or more) from a USB external drive to your My Cloud device:
1) Connect the USB drive to your computer for optimal performance.
2) Connect your computer and the My Cloud device directly to your router with a wired Ethernet connection
3) Copy your data from your external USB drive (or your computer) to your My Cloud device.
I’m copying data from my Mac Mini to the external as a Time Machine backup, having not had an external drive attached, and it’s copying 700-odd Gb of data.
Under network performance optimisation guidelines it says:
‘Data transfer over a wireless connection between your computer and the My Cloud device will generally result in slower data transfer performance’
‘A wired connection between your computer and your router is recommended’
There’s only one USB connection slot on the HDD, and it’s a USB A female.
It’s all connected now and backing up, and copying 700+Gb of stuff via wifi I’m pretty sure would slow everything down to a crawl, thus using a wired connection.
It just seems odd that WD don’t supply a cable to do what they recommend that you do, and that Curry’s don’t keep some in stock.

Eh? everything you wrote there is saying to use a wired ethernet connection to do it. Which they supplied a cable for.

You could plug the mac straight to it with the ethernet cable, and it’d be faster than USB.

They’re only suggesting a USB cable for an existing external HDD.

In summary, you’re wrong to be miffed 😉

I am guessing it’s A to A so the same connector can be used to plug in pendrives or other HDDs.

When it says “A wired connection is recommended” it means your PC wired to your router via an ethernet cable or USB instead of wireless.

They supply an ethernet cable as this it the way you need to connect it to your router. They do state USB is optimal but that might be because it can be faster (depends on what usb and what ethernet).

I would have just connected your PC to the network via another ethernet cable (assuming you have one) and left it sat there copying.

edit: I just got the wrong end of the stick too. What they mean at the start is if you have ANOTHER USB drive then connect it to your PC and transfer it to your new cloud drive thingy instead of connecting it to the drive directly, probably because the usb host on the device is slower than your PC will be.

in summary – connect PC to router via wire. Connect MyCloud to router via wire. Connect any other USB drives to PC and transfer across to MyCloud via cable ethernet.

Now I’m really confused.

Now I’m really confused.

What confuses me is that an A-A cable is:
a) a thing
b) works for this use.

Also, seems totally clear to me it means a wired ethernet connection?

Yeah, reading again, that’s what it’s saying. There’s no mention of the USB port anywhere in that lot. It’s suggesting WD > router > PC (/Mac) > third party USB device.

I guess it’s just me not being entirely clear on what’s actually needed. I’ve never had one of these things before, so I’m just going by what it appeared to say on the bit of paper supplied.
I had just assumed, probably mistakenly, that a USB Cable was needed for data transfer, and the Ethernet was needed for connection to the Internet to allow the personal ‘cloud’ function to operate.
I’m ok doing stuff on computers, but anything to so with ‘ware or connections, I’m hopelessly lost!

in summary – connect PC to router via wire. Connect MyCloud to router via wire. Connect any other USB drives to PC and transfer across to MyCloud via cable ethernet.

This, times many. The USB drive and My Cloud drive aren’t the same thing – the instructions above are telling you how to get data off any USB storage device and onto your My Cloud drive if that’s what you need to do, i.e. they’re instructions specifically for one possible scenario.

Also, it’s been said above but, if the My Cloud drive is plugged straight into your mac, it’s just an expensive HDD. Needs to be wired Ethernet connections between My Drive and router and mac and router if you want it to work as cloud-type storage.

Glad you got it working though 😀

Okey dokey, clear now, lack of experience/knowledge about using one of these jobbies, along with instructions that aren’t really all that clear left me confused, is all. If I’d been at work, I’d have other brains to pick for clarity.
Thanks all for your help, very much appreciated. 😀

Father in law has a weather station that uses an A to A USB cable. I’ve told him not to lose it, because I have never seen one like it…