I recently purchased a My Cloud drive, and set it up as a network drive on my home computer (on the same network) by adding it as a Windows Credential. I have port forwarded the device on port 80 and tried adding it as a Windows Credential the same way on a laptop connected to a different network. I entered its address as xx.xx.xxx.xx:80, but I can't get the drive to show up this way. I have double-checked that the port is open and that the IP is my external IP. Is it possible to connect to it this way despite being on a different network?
It won't work if you're using private IP addressing on your LAN. That's because private IP addresses can't be accessed as such over the Internet (this can be solved with proxy and NAT, we may get to that later). What are the first two octets in the device's IP address?
You tell me, then I'll tell you!
Thanks and HTH,
The IP address starts with 71.74. I know this IP address can be used over the internet because I host a Minecraft server on a computer on the same network.
Wait, did you mean the router's external IP, or the drive's IP? The router's external IP starts with 71.74. As for the drive, I only know its internal IP starts with 192.164.
It's also worth noting that my phone can connect to the drive on different networks, including my data plan.
Then your router already has a proxy or NAT set up to make this device available over the Internet. The easy answer is not the correct one in this case. You might want to connect the driver maker's tech support (or check their FAQs and support postings) to see if this is a known problem (better still, if it is a known problem with a solution already available). Sorry to get your hopes up unnecessarily, but at least you don't have to set up a proxy (which can be tricky) or turn NAT on (not hard, but often takes rooting around in manuals).
Keep us posted on your resolution: you've got me curious now.
Thanks,
Hmm... now I can't even connect to the drive over the internet from my phone. I'll contact customer support and let you know what they tell me.
Western Digital Support got back to me, and apparently the drive isn't designed for this. However, it does have FTP and SSH which I have been playing with, trying to get it to work as a network location but to no avail. I've done some research and some people have been saying to use VPN, although I don't know what that is or how to set it up. I know the drive isn't officially designed for this, but I figure since it can still be easily accessed through the browser and mobile app, there has to be some sort of loophole I can use to access it through file explorer on a different network, right?
You might not be able to do it through File Explorer, but you'll probably be able to do it through a browser window. What diff does it make, as long as you can access your files?
Hope it works out for you!
Well, the project I got this drive for is an animation project, which I will be working on from multiple locations. For a project such as this, it is much easier to be able to access the files directly rather than having to download and upload files constantly. So if this drive can't do it, there has to be a drive out there that can, right? I mean, otherwise what purpose would the "Add a Network Location" function serve?
