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Page 2 of 3 In Operation: The My Book World Edition is a true NAS (Network Attached Storage) device and as such it will appear in your network neighbourhood/network places without needing to install any software. As such and by default, you or anyone else on your home or office network will be able to access the specially designated “public” folder and map it as a network drive in ‘My Computer’ or your MAC desktop for instant access. The My Book’s network settings are set to DHCP by default, so it should grab an IP address from your router or server and be up and running in no time. So if you’re only going to be using the drive within an office environment the setup process couldn’t be simpler. A web interface is included where you can create new share folders, manage user’s rights and passwords, update network settings and other various tasks like firmware updates and drive management, all very simple and the only function that I think is lacking is user quotas to stop that one guy in the office from filling the whole drive with his useless junk (every office has one, you know who you are). So it works great in a LAN environment, just as simple as any other NAS device, but that’s not the point of the World Edition, the point is to be able to access it from anywhere in the world. This is accomplished through the included MioNet remote access software. The MioNet software can be installed on your PC to control and access the drive over your local LAN and can also be installed on a remote PC to access the drive over the internet. You create a MioNet account with which up to 5 remote PCs can login into, and not only will they be able to see the My Book, they will also be able to see the drives on the other PCs logged into the same MioNet account, and even take over their desktops (remote desktop). You can have multiple MioNet accounts access the same My Book drive if you don’t want these other users to be able to access the other computers logged in to the original account. I had some issues getting the software to work on a remote PC I set up, however it worked fine on my laptop here connected to the My Book via the LAN. It should be noted that even if you are connected to the My Book over the LAN and using the MioNet software (i.e. not windows networking), and you don’t have an internet connection on that LAN then you can’t access the drive, as the MioNet software has to login to its central server to validate you upon start up. So if you can’t login, then you have to mess around mapping the drive manually, a bit of a pain for something that should be really straight forward. As with all Western Digital My Book drives, EMC Retrospect Backup software is included to help manage your backups and even automate them for you, I’m quite a fan of the Retrospect software, as it’s very user friendly while still being quite a powerful bit of software. The performance of the My Book is as good as you’d expect over a LAN connection, and over an internet connection the performance is really a non-issue, it will be as good as your connection will allow. The drive operates in relative silence with only a few normal hard drive noises emanating when it’s being used. A thermostatically controlled fan helps keep the drive cool, and as the case design is very open around the top, base and rear, air is free to circulate by convection even without the aid of the fan so I don’t think heat will ever be a problem with this drive.
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