 As good as it can be |
| Review Date: March 6, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Donovan, San Francisco, CA USA |
When I saw this, I got pretty excited because I'd been looking for these features and they all came together in one drive.
Setup: The setup was easy and quick. Not a lengthy user manual but enough to get you going and more info on the disc. It asks for a driver update when introduced to new machines but I haven't seen a need for it after connecting through Windows Network (although it works with Macs as well, not just Windows). I haven't done much with the remote access but it looks easy to use so far.
Capabilities: It does everything I needed (i.e. let me get to my music, movies and pictures in one place). I watch a lot of downloaded movies on my Xbox 360 so it's nice to be able to put them on the big screen in the living room or open one from a laptop in bed without having to move the file or drive or have it take up space on both machines.
One of the big pluses beyond having your music/ movies available from any computer in the house is that you also improve your computers by freeing up that space - especially with desktops. I used to have gigabytes full of music on my desktop and laptop but now I have a lot more free space on my desktop so I don't need a new internal drive for that to keep it fresh.
Performance: It runs on ethernet and wifi so be careful with reviews on speed. USB connections run about the same on every machine but networking depends on your computer, your wifi standard and your router. If you have a fast machine, a good router and preferably N-WiFi, you'll get good speed. Of course, ethernet connection is really fast but I use wireless N and it's not quite the same but it gets the job done. Speed is only an issue for large file transfer but not actual usage. I haven't seen any hiccups streaming and watching movies (~700MB each) or listening to music.
Price: Some of my friends have NAS systems that house up to 8TB and run about $1,000+ but I'm not there yet. This one is great for the money - especially considering the price of a 1TB alone and the additional features.
Improvements: I wish file transfers were a little faster - I know that that depends on my router and computer as much as the drive, but you can't blame a guy for wanting a little more!
The write up covers a lot of the specs and details on what it can/can't do. This is just my view of the product. Hope it helps! |
Suprisingly versatile
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| Review Date: March 14, 2009 |
| Reviewer: F. Rogers, |
| I bought this expecting just a simple, no-frills NAS device, but WDC really packed a lot of functionality into this thing. You can access your files via HTTP, FTP, CIFS (Windows shares), or SFTP, it comes with media server software ("TwonkyMedia") built in, and best of all, it gives you full access via SSH to the Linux-based OS running under the hood. The amount of tinkering potential this little thing has is a power user's dream. |
Budget NAS, but I'm happy with it after a couple of tweaks
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| Review Date: May 12, 2010 |
| Reviewer: G. Farnsworth, Chicago, IL |
I bought the 2TB version of this (but not the version that has two physical drives). I'm not really all that interested in having the redundancy of RAID, weird programs backing up my computer when I'm not around, or software that allows me to connect to it remotely. I just want to throw my data on there from any one of the computers on my network and be able to get it off reasonably quickly, and I want it to go to sleep when I'm not using it. This drive does those things well.
I was looking for a drive that:
1. allows me to ssh in and tweak things by hand if I want
2. goes to sleep when not in use and wakes up without a problem
3. is cheap, quiet, and looks good
4. is fast enough for my needs
5. doesn't have any gotchas that impair its use significantly
In these respects this drive performs well.
The first thing I did when I got it was enable ssh, which you can do through the web menu. Then I logged in and disabled the mionet script. Mionet is the software that allows you to log in remotely, but it's apparently the buggiest and most wasteful program ever. You can supposedly disable this through the menu but it comes back on when you are not looking, so you actually need to physically go in and disable the startup script. I'm a linux guy so this was no problem. There are some howto's on the web that will tell you how to do this.
I played around with twonky, which is the software for playing media through UPnP. I think it's a cool idea, but the truth is that I have no need for it. I don't need/want to stream to anything but computers, and in that case it's easier to just map this drive and play the movie or song from that computer using my normal software. So I disabled twonky as well. It seemed to have a bunch of spawned processes, so this was probably a good thing. This also needs to be done through ssh.
I didn't install any of the software that comes on the CD's or anything. Apparently that software is crap anyway. I'm not sure what I would want it for. This drive works once you stick it on the network...no configuration necessary. I can get to the drive either by referencing its IP address or the hostname I gave it through the web interface.
The drive is silent and unobtrusive. The led white bar on the front slowly flashes on and off if it's sleeping and moves up and down if it's not. You can disable these leds through the web interface so it's even less obtrusive. I was worried that the sleep feature wouldn't work correctly but it works perfectly, which is one big plus about this drive. You don't notice it go to sleep because it's so quiet anyway, but it does after 15 minutes or something of not being used. Then when you try and read from it again it starts up quickly and there's no fuss. No need to turn it off or mess with it in any way, ever. Nice.
Performance is...pretty ok considering the type of device it is. According to the reviews I read, this drive is fast compared with others in its class. If you want something real fast, you have to pay up. Anyway, I have a gigabit network and I do realize you can't ever actually get the theoretical optimal speed. For reference (indicator of how good my network is or isn't), when I copy from one computer to another (both pretty fast computers) using SMB I get about 19.5 MB per second. When I use SMB to copy something onto this NAS I get about 10.8 MB per second. It's not as fast as copying to a computer, but I knew that going in. This is a powersaving and inexpensive device and both of those say it won't match performance of a fast computer with a PCI express gigabit connection. Anyway, when I read from it I get more like 16 MB per second or a little more. That's nearly as fast as a computer-to-computer copy. So I'm satisfied. I can certainly watch movies off of this drive directly without any skipping or anything. If you want a dramatic speed improvement over those, you can use ftp instead of smb (the latter just means mapping the network drive and copying to it through windows for those of you who may not know). I don't need the extra speed, though, and it's more of a hassle to use ftp, so I disabled the ftp server. Some day I may actually upgrade the SMB server the drive comes with. Apparently you can get a significant performance boost doing that but it's much more of a hack than the things I mentioned above. I don't want to risk screwing anything up in this drive now that it's working so flawlessly.
You can still remotely use this drive if you configure your router to pass http requests or ssh requests to it. No need for mionet. That's true of any computer that runs ssh and an http server. I would be crazy to sign up for some service to provide this capability. I didn't look closely at the twonky server, but I got the feeling that it would eventually want you to sign up for something as well. I shouldn't comment too much because I just disabled that garbage.
Things I don't do that apparently this drive can do:
1. Stream movies, pictures, or music to UPnP devices or Ipods
2. ftp, apple protocols
3. remote use using mionet
4. automatic backups
5. utilize an external USB hard drive
6. anything else besides just hold
so you will have to read other reviews for info about these features.
So yeah, I'm more techy than probably the average user, but the few tweaks I used weren't that significant. Since this drive allows ssh access, runs linux, and is popular enough that lots of people have it and have figured out how to tweak it, it's pretty easy to get working perfectly and there are plenty of howtos on the web. I'm real happy with it.
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Edit: Instructions on how to do the tweaks I did are not available in the instructions. There are a number of sites on the web that describe how and why to do them. Just make sure your tweaks apply to the new "white light" version, which is this one. Some tweaks refer to the old "blue circle" version. Anyway this is what I did: First enable ssh through the web menu and ssh in as root. Default password is welc0me. Use these tips at your own risk obviously.
1. To disable mionet: First disable it through the web menu. Unfortunately the wakeup script will start it up again in 20 minutes or so because of a bug, so we fix it by editing /usr/mionet/monitorCVM.sh using vi. At the top (after the comments) add the following:
# Start of hack to make Mionet obey startup flag
if [ ! -f "/etc/.mionet_on_startup" ]; then
exit 1
fi
# End of hack to make Mionet obey startup flag
2. To disable twonky by moving its startup script to the root home directory:
mv /etc/init.d/S97twonkyserver ~
3. To disable mDNS responder by moving its startup script to the root home directory:
mv /etc/init.d/S9mDNSResponder ~
I disabled ftp through the web menu. There are other things that can be disabled or even upgraded but these are what make the difference and it all works for me. Reboot the NAS after making these tweaks.
If you do a "top" command before these tweaks you will see a number of processes dealing with these three features. After you will see that much less is running and when you copy to and from the NAS you will notice a performance boost. For security you can then disable ssh through the web menu if you want.
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Very fast, very easy to install, just works!!!
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| Review Date: March 5, 2009 |
| Reviewer: J.L.A., California |
| This is my third Western Digital external drive, but my first ethernet network drive. It works great, all my Macs can utilize the MyBook World Edition at the same time and I love that even my PlayStation 3 can also wirelessly open files (music, photos, videos) from it. The 1TB is so much space to work with and I love how quiet it is compared to my old Ximeta NetDisk. The other thing which is great is that I was able to connect another external drive to this drive via USB port in the back. Western Digital to hard drives is what Apple is to computers--quality!! |
One of the best designed, value-priced network drive
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| Review Date: October 25, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Subhradyuti Sarkar, San Diego, California United States |
I have the Mybook World Edition (1 TB) drive up and running for almost three weeks now as my primary backup device, and I have had zero problems so far. The installation could not be easier -- just plugged the ethernet cable to the router and the electric socket to the wall outlet -- and the drive booted up nicely and made itself available in the network. The drive looks very elegant with the white enclosure and white LED strip, so you won't have to hide it inside a cabinet etc.
Here are some other things that a prospective buyer might like to know:
1. The bad news first: Mionet remote access service is next to unusable due to slow and buggy Java client.
2. In Windoes XP boxes, you do not need to install WD Discovery software (if you prefer minimalism) -- just type the command "net use * \\mybookworld\public" and the Public share will be network mounted. Use similar command for other shares that you create. WD Discovery works flawlessly, though.
3. Lots and lots of configuration options via Web interface (Advanced mode), more than you would ever need.
4. Mybook can email critical system and network messages to predefined email addresses -- a nifty touch.
5. Apart from CIFS (standard Windows file sharing), Mybook supports the FTP, NFS and AFP protocols, all of which can be individually turned on or off. Also there is a built in DLNA server (Twonky) and iTunes server.
6. My Xbox can stream music, movies and photos from Mybook without any special setup. However, H.264/MP4 videos cannot be streamed, even though they can be played from a locally attached storage device. I am pretty sure this is Xbox's problem, though.
7. I do not have gigabit ethernet in my home. I observe a write speed of 70 Mbps over 100 Mbps ethernet, and 20-30 Mbps over 802.11g wi-fi.
8. [Advanced] You can access the underlying OS (Linux) of Mybook using ssh. This itself is not terribly useful unless you are planning to hack the drive (e.g. to install a torrent client), except for the following case. Twonky DLNA server can only watch one folder (plus its subfolders) each for music, movies and photos. If you have your media scatter around different places in the file system, you can create symlink within the special 'watched' folders, and can access all you media without physically copying them over.
Overall, I cannot recommend this drive enough for hassle free backup (also check out the backup software SyncBack SE, a gem), shared storage and media streming. The only thing lacking is reliable remote access client -- hopefully Mionet will be upgraded in the future. |
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