Backing up my computer is the last thing I ever want to do. I know it’s simple to do these days, but it’s the initial setup that I can’t bear to wait through. But we all know our hard drives are bound to kick the bucket and at the rate I’ve been taking photographs this last year, I can’t afford to lose all those precious memories. Maybe it’s time I just nut-up and do it.
Today, Western Digital unveiled their redesigned My Book World Edition network drives to do just that. These large capacity network drives are great for storing and streaming content to your Xbox 360, PS3 or other DLNA player. Content will make its way to your iTunes or Windows Media Player 11 if you’re into that sort of thing.
WD GreenPower drives occupy the MBWE so they run quiet and cool. The 1TB and 2TB models work seamlessly with Macs and PCs and they’re automatically discoverable on both. They come with a 3-year limited warranty and the 1TB model will retail for $229.99 while the 2TB can be had for $450. Expect mirrored editions later on this year. We’ll have a full review later today.
Features
The new My Book World Edition network hard drives feature:
– Automatic, continuous backup for all the computers on your network;
– Simple file recovery for lost or damaged files;
– Centralized storage and sharing for all your family’s digital content;
– Best-in-class performance;
– Easy access to all your data from anywhere, anytime;
– Works seamlessly on networks with both Windows and Mac computers;
– Media server capability with DLNA 1.5 and UPnP certification to stream content to XBOX 360, Playstation3, wireless digital picture frames and connected audio receivers;
– Centralize and stream music collection to a Mac® or Windows® PC using iTunes software;
– Remote sharing of personal content like photos or documents with family and friends;
– USB 2.0 Utility Port to turn any USB drive into an instant network drive or extra capacity for the My Book World Edition;
– Cooler, quieter, eco-friendly design with WD Green Power Drives which run cooler, quieter and consume up to 33 percent less power1;
– Capacity gauge to see at a glance how much space is available on your drive;
– High-speed data transfer with Gigabit Ethernet; and,
– 3-year limited warranty.
Photo Gallery by Picturesurf
Not sure if I just have had bad luck, but I’ll be on my third one of the previous 500gb model in 6 months when my warranty replacement one arrives… all I can say is, make sure you back it up!
I had the 1TB Ethernet enabled World Edition Drive. IT sucks ass. Transfer speeds are unacceptable.
After letting a backup of <250Gb Run for 36 hours I ripped out the SATA drive and just installed it inside my PC. at $150 It was a pretty decent price for a 1TB drive.
http://christian.puzder.com/?p=186
You are indeed correct Simon, if you check the reviews on My Book products, most of them have an average 6 month life span. Honestly, do yourself and your data a favor, pass on ANY Western Digital product. They used to be a pretty decent hardware manufacturer, but now, after having personally seen 2 of them fail, 1 at 6 months, 1 at 3 months. Yeah, I go with Seagate now.
Morne
My first My Book failed on the first day / first time I plugged it in. After sending it back (which costs the customer money?!) they sent a new one which has been kicking since it came back. That was 2 1/2 years ago now.
I’ve had a MyBook Pro for over two years and not a single problem with it.
how much do they pay you to publish these ADS?
please, at least try to come up with an interesting story to make this a little less obvious.
Thanks!
When we developed the “New” My Book World Edition we listened to the community and our customers. You asked for performance, media server, advanced features, more robust backup and easier discovery and setup.
Here is a short list of features included with this product:
Auto discovery with Vista and Mac computers
DLNA 1.5 / UPnP Media Server (TwonkyMedia)
SSH Enabled
iTunes Server
FTP Server
Remote Web Access
Quota management
Email alert system for critical events
CIFS/SMB, AFP and NFS support
We do listen and appreciate all your feedback (positive or negative). It helps us deliver better products for you. :)
-ScottWD
Scott, how does the backup work? Does it support TimeMachine?
look at smallentbuilder’s website. This my book is nowhere near the crappy old ones.
performance i top notch, although i lack torrent og print serving. But if SSH is enabled it shouldn’t be a problem installing transmission torrent.
I have the WD Worldbook 1TB drive for over a year. It is worthless! Here are the reasons:
- The MioNet software is full of problems. I spent more time reinstalling, rebooting, trouble shooting random errors than actually using the drive. Currently I can’t even access the drive for an unknown reason. I was scared to death that I lost the data. Fortunately, for some unknown reasons, I can access the drive using another computer.
- It is very, very, very slow. If you think buying this large capacity drive to put lots of files on it, you are dead wrong. Yes, you can write tons and tons of data on the drive. The problem is that it takes a very long time to do that – to the point that it is not usable. WD told me that the transfer rate for these drives is 3 to 5 megabits per second. That means you can only transfer about 37kb per minute to the drive. Base on that fact, it would take 47+ years to fill a 1TB drive. Now, that was what WD support told me. My experience is that I can transfer at a significantly higher rate than 3 to 5 mbps; however, it still took me over two hours to transfer 2.3 GB of data on 16,000 files to the drive.
- Availability is a big issue. As you may have already know, you need MioNet central server to verify who you are before you can access the drive. The problem is that MioNet seems to not be available during the late night hours; perhaps they shut down to do maintenance. That also happen to be the time that I can spare to do this sloooowww, looooong back up to the Wordbook drive. With this lack of availability at night, my back up would fail in the late hours. Now I have a situation where I can’t reliability back up at night. I can’t back up during the day because I need the laptop to do work.
- Getting your data from the drive is a probelm also. If you were successful putting a ton of data on the drive, you will have a heck of a time access to that back up data. You will have that same slow transfer rate and low / intermittent accessibility to the drive.
- A constant fear of the backed up data can disappear. While trouble shooting the problem with a WD support person, he concluded that the drive is bad and I should reformatt or replace it. This was a horror scenarior for me – loosing the only back up of my data. Fortunately I did not take the advice – and through hours and hours of tinkering, I was able to determine that my data is still intact – because, by accident, I was able to access the drive and the data using another laptop. Now I am paranoid about this drive and started looking for alternative solution.
How is that for great engineering and great reliability! Look somewhere else for a solution. Don’t look at western digital worldbook and you will save yourself a lot of frustration, a lot of time, not mentioning saving the money from buying something that has a high chance of becoming nothing more than an expensive paper weight.