The WD My Cloud is a wonderful device, very impressive! It sits beautifully on your desk top and creates your own cloud for you.
There are a few models available. Both black and white in 2, 3, 4 and 6TB.
It is full-featured, easy to use and the software that comes with it is amazing as well. It simply plugs into your existing network via ethernet and that’s it!
Unfortunately, there have been reports of a disconnection issue…
Fix the WD My Cloud Disconnect
What you want to do to fix the intermittent disconnect of your WD My Cloud is to change it’s network connection from DHCP to Static IP.
Reserve an IP on the Network
First, login to your router where you want to reserve a local IP address on your local network for the WD My Cloud device.
This step will differ from router to router but the concept is the same and if you aren’t sure how to do it, you can search your router’s documentation to get instructions.
My router is a TP-Link TL-MR3420. With my router, I go to DHCP > Address Reservation where I’ll fill in a MAC Address and the IP I want to give the device on the local network.
The MAC Address can be obtained at the bottom of the WD My Cloud drive. Literally pick it up, turn it over and you’ll see “MAC Address: XX:XX:….” at the bottom of it on the sticker. Then fill in an IP that is in your local network range.
Save the settings and reboot the router if needed for the changes to take effect.
Configure the Static IP on WD My Cloud
To do that, go to http://wdmycloud.local and login as a user or administrator. Then navigate to Settings > Network > Network Services.
For the “Network Mode” setting, it is most likely set to “DHCP” which means it uses it’s host and automatically determines it’s IP address from there. So choose “Static IP” and you’ll see a dialog come up which allows you to fill in some settings.
For the IP address, fill in the local IP address that you reserved earlier on. And for the Netmask (subnet mask), you’ll most likely fill in 255.255.255.0 unless you’re using something different on your local network as the mask.
That’s it, save the settings by clicking “Save“. The WD My Cloud will become unresponsive as it restarts it’s network firmware/software and connects using it’s new, static IP address. Be patient and give it some time.
That’s it, your disconnection issues should be resolved now.
June 30, 2016 at 12:24 pm
Thank you.
It sorted out my issue.
May 24, 2017 at 11:09 am
does NOT sort the issue for us.
static ip address, smartware shows the device briefly, then it vanished. On occasion is shows it again, only to vanish again soon after.
ping to the device shows a constant <1ms, so the connection is fine.
May 30, 2017 at 9:08 pm
Didn’t work for me either, and now I can’t even get back to the Dashboard. Unless Level 2 tech can help me fix this whenever they deign to call, this POS is going back, along with the Netgear switch I bought because of the Uverse/Pace 5268AC router that is a known impediment to WD My Cloud devices.