PC World
28/11/11
Western Digital's My Book Live is a network attached storage (NAS) device that's available in 1TB, 2TB or 3TB capacities and with a Gigabit Ethernet connection. It's a simple device to use and while it offers plenty of storage space for your files, it also gives you an easy way to access them remotely.
The WD My Book Live is more than a typical network storage device; it can also be used to share your locally-stored files through the Internet. Anything stored on the drive can be accessed remotely from other computers, or even from a smartphone, and the best part is that you don't need to know anything about how it all works to make it all work.
Once the WD My Book Live is connected t your network router, it can be set up in many ways, but the most simple is with the supplied CD. However, because the drive is UPnP capable, if you use Windows 7, for example, it will simply show up as a device on the network. You can then right-click on it and select the option to launch its Web interface. Or, you could simply type http://mybooklive in the URL bar of your browser to get to it.
From the Web interface, you can add password-protected user accounts, create new folders and choose which folders users have access to. You can also manage backups and even enable data encryption. It's a clean and logical Web interface but it does have some annoying pop-up alerts that appear every time there is an 'event', such as when the network connection is lost or becomes intermittent. (Alerts are also emailed, which we prefer; the most recent one we received alerted us to a new firmware version.)
Techworld Australia secure storage reviews
After installation, the drive will appear in your local network and you'll be able to drag and drop files on to it. If you want to use the drive to store your computer's backups, then you can easily do this by following the instructions in the Web interface. It has you covered with the details on how to set up the drive with Apple's Time Machine or with Windows 7's built-in back up feature.
In our tests, using a Gigabit Ethernet switch with Gigabit-capable computers attached to it, the WD was able to write data at a rate of 39.1 megabytes per second. This is better than what you would get when copying files over USB 2.0. Incidentally, the My Book Live doesn't have a USB port, so you can't easily dump files to it from a thumbdrive, nor share USB-based drives through it.
The standout feature of the My Book Live is its ability to be seen on the Internet and accessed remotely -- you don't have to know anything about networking in order to set this up. All you have to do is enable the 'remote access' option in the drive's Web interface and register an account with the www.wd2go.com Web site. There is no need to forward ports in your router, and you don't have to fiddle with dynamic DNS settings. To access your shared files, you can log in to the wd2go Web site from any Internet-connected computer -- it becomes your own little personal 'cloud'.
The site makes use of Java, so you will need to make sure that this is installed on your computer before attempting to access your drive remotely. The interface for remote access is sparse; it only shows the devices that are registered to your account and you can click on them to access their folders. The folders can then be opened in Windows Explorer and files can be dragged and dropped to your desktop. How fast the files transfer will depend on the Internet connection both at your home (for uploading the data) and at your remote location (for downloading the data), and vice versa if you are uploading to the device. The opened folders automatically get mapped with drive letters on the local system you are using -- you can browse them as if they were local drives.
Additionally, you can access files remotely through mobile devices. There are mobile WD 2go apps available for the iPhone and Android (2.1 and above). Before you can access content through the iPhone, you have to get an access code for it and tell the drive that your iPhone is a trusted device. The code took close to one minute to generate during our tests, but it all worked to plan once we got it. The app isn't great though: when playing music, it doesn't allow you to skip tracks, it can't play one track after the other, nor does it allow you to exit the 'play' screen without stopping the music (if you want to browse your collection while playing a file, for example). Videos will only play if they are in MOV or MP4 formats. We weren't able to get the Android version running on our HTC Rhyme smartphone, even though it uses Android 2.3.5.
We should note that in order to get the remote functions of our drive to work, we had to upgrade the firmware to version 2.0. We had some trouble upgrading during our tests -- the drive couldn't do it using its auto-update feature so we had to download and install the firmware manually.
All up, the WD My Book Live is a neat little storage solution for the home and we like the fact that it makes remote file access so simple. The mobile app for the iPhone could use some work though and we hope that new drives come with the correct firmware installed so that manual updating doesn't need to be undertaken. The drive in our test model had a 1TB capacity (for $169). It's also available in 2TB (for $269) and 3TB (for $319) capacities.
1
Poor installation using Vista, forces you to sign up for a free trial with mio***. No mobile access under remote settings, android app didn't work. Pretty much nothing went right, & I don't consider myself technologically retarded, but I do think this WD product is. Back to the shop you go!
Advertise with us Editorial Contacts
With over 25 years of brand awareness and credibility, PCWorld Australia consistently delivers editorial excellence through award-winning content and trusted product reviews.
Andrew Roberts
1
As the other user review said, this product is a nightmare! I am on my second one and it wont install correctly, come into the network, connect to the internet etc etc.
Sounds like a wonderful device but reality is there are too many problems with it.
HK
2
This seemed like a great product but I am not so sure now!! Access to shared public files is no problem but so far access to private files has been a nightmare, I can only write to them if I make them public and only read from the even though they are read/write when they are private. I keep being asked for a network password to access the private folder but whatever combination I have tried fails to work, and yes I've tried everything including no user name and no password etc, etc.
Also the email process to get a web account to access the drive online does not work, I have tried doing this outside of the software and await a response from WD.
If WD support can't sort out the read/write issues and the online access problem, this will be going back to the retailer.
I also had to update the firmware and the WD online support and FAQs have been of little use.
Stu
3
Product is rubbish, For something that is DLNA you have to go through hoops to get it to work with a Samsung TV. Also you have to pay to upgrade the Twonky media server within the product!!
How do they expect non computer savy people to use this kit!!
Tom Grimm
4
WD must have updated some things between last October and now, because I have had no problems what so ever with my 2TB drive. It works seamlessly with both my my iPhone and ipad2 through wd2go. It also works great with my Sharp Aquos TV using DLNA. I didn't have to do a thing except connect my TV through the Internet. I also use it to transfer files from my desktop to my laptop using Wi-fi,
The only problem I have encountered is using it with iTunes. Overall it works fine, but iTunes has a bad habit over overwriting the data in the Album Artist tag of the mp3 when it syncs. For regular music and single artist albums it's no problem. For compilation albums, it's a nightmare..
Regardless, I've been extremely happy with how mine has performed. Even uploading music for my PC was not as bad as some comments suggested. Mine is connected via cat5 through a router capable of 1 gig transfers. It only took an hour to upload about 8000 mp3's
Brad
5
Just got one and so far it has been fine. Easy to use and configure. Just a pity about USB but otherwise a great device.