This Backup Thingy Actually Works

So, I’m not very good with backing up.


See, I live deep in the mountainous wilds of Eastern California, where the internet is slow and the days are hard.

And, there’s a drought here, if you haven’t heard. I don’t have time for backing up.

And last month there was a fire. Not a house fire. But a forest fire. A big one. Came right for my house. Up the hill it came. Turned a little. And then rushed again straight at me.


So we grabbed all of the important stuff out of the safe, unplugged the backup hard drive, wrangled the pigs and the kids into the car, and drove away.

California-Wildfires

Thankfully, there were lots of firefighters. And firetrucks. And bulldozers. And airplanes.

And within a couple days the fire was out.

So we returned home.

And unpacked.

And put all the important papers away.

Put the kids and the pigs back where they belonged, mostly.

And I put the hard drive back on my desk.

A month ago.


The hard drive sat on my desk, wondering where its friend, Mr. USB plug was.

I wondered too, but knew he would turn up. Unless the kids or the pigs had run off with him.

And so the hard drive sat. And sat. And waited.


And then a new hard drive arrived in the mail from WD, a Western Digital company.

That jogged my mind, and I remembered something I’d completely forgotten since the fire. WD wanted me to review their WD My Cloud EX2. It’s a private cloud in a box — basically a big, expandable hard drive thingy that you plug into your network and just forget about. That’s my kind of device. And, they wanted to pay me, too. Awesome!

So I plugged it in and told my Mac to start using the new network drive it created for my Time Machine backups.

And I promptly forgot all about it.

See, I told you I’m not good with backups.


And then today, someone pinged me and said, “Hey Dane, remember that WD My Cloud EX2 we sent you to review? You never wrote anything. You’ve been too busy redesigning your website and changing the world and all that.” Ok, so she didn’t say that last part.

Fuming, I said I’d have something up by the end of the day.

I’ll show them, I thought. I’ll give that little black box with the blinkenlights a review they’ll never forget. It’ll be so harsh, it’ll make ’em cry.

that-infernal-thing-actually-backed-everything-up

So I looked in my Time Machine.

Holy moly — I had a backup! A bunch of them, in fact. It actually worked. That infernal device actually worked!

That little black box in the closet, so silent that I’d forgotten all about it, actually backed up everything up! And not just once, but more than a dozen times.

In my book, that’s really all you can ask for in a backup hard drive thingy.


I could read the manual and tell you all kinds of interesting facts and specs and technical mumbo-jumbo about the WD My Cloud EX2, but let’s face, you’re not going to read it either. And you don’t care.

You just want something to back everything up.


Here’s a link to more info on the WD My Cloud EX2, if you want to know how many horses it has under the hood. But, if you’re like me, and not very good at backing up, and you’re in the market for something to help, I think you could do a lot worse than the WD My Cloud EX2.


Mark my words, this product will be remembered for its name long after it’s been surpassed technologically. But until that happens, I’m going to keep using it — until I forget to plug it back in after the next “act of God” threatens my kids and pigs.