Intended for home use, this NAS certainly packs in a lot of storage capacity and is also media-friendly
T he Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay 8TB is a consumer NAS device for the home. It has a minimalist design, piano black finish and set-top box dimensions. The appeal for home users lies in its ease of use, and its combination of media sharing and backup capabilities.
Once connected to your network via the Gigabit Ethernet port, setup via the device’s webpage is straightforward, requiring a firmware update and setting up a Seagate Access account, which enables the cloud (remote access) functionality. You can also choose to run the two internal drives in RAID 0 (to make full use of all 8TB), or RAID 1 (halving the available capacity to enable redundancy) during the device’s setup.
You can upload files to the drive a number of ways. You can download and install the free Sdrive tool on your computer, which enables the Personal Cloud to appear as another drive, or you can connect a USB drive to one of the available ports on the box.
File access couldn’t be simpler. The Personal Cloud can connect to smart TVs and current generation consoles via its DLNA certification, allowing streaming playback of videos and music. You can also stream or download content to your mobile or tablet by installing the free Seagate Media app. It also supports UPnP and iTunes streaming.
The Personal Cloud can also connect to a Chromecast, Roku player, Apple TV, and has an app environment, which can run Plex, BitTorrent Sync and WordPress (for webhosting purposes).
As well as the media storage functions, the Personal Cloud can schedule and store backups of your computer and mobile device data, sync to your Google Drive or Dropbox account, be used as an FTP/SFTP server, and even a printer server. The price tag is a bit high, especially if you don’t make use of all its features, but the Personal Cloud 2-Bay also comes in cheaper 4TB ($599) and 6TB ($729) sizes. Peter Gutierrez
KEY SPECS
2 x 4TB drives • 1 x USB 2 & 1 x USB 3 • 1 x Gigabit Ethernet