Western Digital’s Week Long My Cloud Outage
Customers who have purchased the local cloud solution “My Cloud” offered by Western Digital have had limited availability to their personal cloud since March 26th.
Western Digital released a statement that said, “We continue to make progress restoring connections to our My Cloud and My Book Live servers, but some users continue to experience intermittent connectivity and transfer speed issues.” WD also went on to say, “We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and we are working very hard to resolve these issues and resume normal service for everyone as soon as possible. We thank you for your patience.”
The personal cloud works by accessing your data using what is called a WD2Go service. This intermediary service is required so that users can access their files. Since this intermediary service is down, clients of Western Digital are unable to connect to their My Cloud device. The My Cloud device is essentially a branding play on a USB external hard drive. The WD2Go service links that device with the internet and this service operates as the authentication tool between users and their data.
Many industry analysts have balked at Western Digital’s response. Some sources such as TechRepublic are saying that posts on the WD forum have conspicuously gone missing. These posts contained information about user’s personal experiences around the My Cloud outage. Other industry analysts have speculated that the Western Digital WD2GO service may be under attack from hackers using tactics such as DDoS attacks. Since Western Digital hasn’t told its users exactly what has caused the outage, users can only speculate as to what the root cause is.
Some users feel as if the wool has been pulled over their eyes in regards to the service. CloudSurfer89 commented in a Western Digital forum post saying, “Wasted over 100GBP (for what is now an external hard drive), I bought it for its remote access and in my opinion I’ve paid to use WD servers in the price of the product, if not then they shouldn’t relay it through there servers. When I bought the device, I was on the understanding that it would be my own cloud space which technically isn’t as it has to run through there servers first. “
Can Western Digital recover from the PR disaster? As more media coverage on this outage grows, it will be interesting to see how the hard drive creator reacts.
