| Article Index |
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| Western Digital 500GB My Book World Edition Review |
| Page 2 - In Operation |
| Page 3 - Conclusion |
| All Pages |
This latest in the long line of ‘My Book’ external hard drives from
Western Digital takes a different approach, giving you a full NAS solution by means of a Gigabit Ethernet connection and the ability to access it from anywhere in the world.
Western Digital’s range of ‘My Book’ external hard drives all share almost the exact same basic design which resembles, well, a book (der!). As they all share the same design, the different models of My Books are distinguished by their colour scheme. In the past we have looked at the My Book Premium ES which was black, and the My Book Pro Edition II which was silver, the ‘World Edition’ we have today has a high-gloss piano white finish, which looks very slick and surprisingly doesn’t show blemishes like fingerprints which can really ruin the aesthetics of a device like this. The same rubber strip that is included on the other My Book drives is present on the World Edition as well, which runs around the top, back and base of the drive, meaning it can be stood up or laid down without risk of scratching the fine gloss finish.
We’re going to be looking at the 500GB version today (Model# WDG1NC5000), which is the base model of the series. A 750GB version is also available, and the ‘My Book World Edition II’ range (which is the same setup except with 2 drives in a raid array) are available in 1TB or 1.5TB sizes, just the right size for storing your holiday photos, all 430,000 of them. The 500GB version we’re looking at today sells online for just under AU$400, or about $180 more than the 500GB SATA drive on its own. So it’s an extra $180 for the NAS casing and software, is it worth it?
As we’ve said earlier on, the design of this My Book World Edition is the same as the rest of the My Book range, with a single power button on the front surrounded by two rings of blue LEDs, the outer rims denotes power status and disk activity, while the inner rim indicates how full the internal drive is and lights up in a clockwise direction as the drive fills up.
On the rear of the drive we have the power connecter, a 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet port and a type-A USB2.0 port. This USB port is not to connect the drive directly to your computer (though that would have been useful) but instead you can connect another external USB hard drive or flash drive to the My Book to increase its storage capacity, no need to buy another ‘World Edition’ drive if you need more storage space, just buy a hard drive and a $20 USB2.0 external case and you’ve instantly got the space you need.
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|122.49.173.xxx |2008-02-03 21:45:47 Mark - Don't Buy 500GB My Book World Edition!Not a good piece of gear! The device has a definite propensity to overheat in temperatures less that 27C. This happened several times in slightly warm environments. You could not have confidence in leaving it switched on over summer and expect reliable remote access. Also had incredible difficulty in deleting some back up files. Kept on getting the message that the files didn't exist. Appeared to be an intermittent problem. Also lost communication between the drive and mionet software on several occasions. A review of web help files shows there are many know problems. I am taking it back!
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|128.61.97.xxx |2008-05-24 01:24:05 Rob - Absolutely Do Not BuyI purchased the 500GB model online for 80 dollars, I thought it was a great deal. 7 months later, my book was dead and I was never able to direct connect. Using a crossover cable, a static IP and the mionet software, the drive was unable to be used. It's a complete POS with even worse software that you have to use with it
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|202.12.233.xxx |2008-06-04 14:20:07 Chris - MrAbsolutely brilliant drive, has the ability to load own firmware and with ssh & cron daemons just to name a few available services.
Very handy as a NAS drive accepting secure connections (scp, ssh, sftp) over the web.
I am very happy with this drive.
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|155.35.248.xxx |2008-06-25 12:51:35 Justin McDonald - Principal Software EngineerThis product did not work for me out of the box. After copying large files to it over the network the disk would become read only which required a reboot of the box.
The only way to address this issue is to do a 4 year computer science degree and void the box's warranty.
You see..the issue stems from the disk partition shipped by default with the box which is used to store your files on. For some reason the disk chucks a fit and remounts itself as read-only.
I am now happy with the device but had to
hack firmware (voids waranty) to run ssh, reformat the partition.
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|85.228.250.xxx |2008-08-08 07:55:26 Christian - Home userI seem to have the same problem... Bought it yesterday, and it works for a while, then becomes read-only. Talk about disappointment!
