Product ReviewsHard disks
The My Book World Edition is Western Digital's latest single drive Nas, and comes in capacities of 1TB and 2TB. It has the ubiquitous My Book capacity gauge along its spine and features a USB 2 port next to the Gigabit Ethernet socket on the rear. The only other external features are a power switch on the back and the slots cut into the plastic around the edge of the case. These act as a heat-dissipation system, allowing the heat to escape and obviating the need for a fan to keep the drive cool. There are no fancy status lights here. Western Digital's focus with the My Book World Edition is on backup. Like Iomega's StorCenter ix2, it cites the ease of setting up the Nas and creating a backup schedule. We were keen to see if it lived up to the claims more successfully than the ix2. In addition to acting as a repository for backups, the My Book World Edition has an iTunes Server, DLNA media server and can be accessed remotely over the Internet, allowing you to retrieve files from, potentially, anywhere in the world. Setting up the My Book was simplicity itself. There's no software to install and no long-winded process to follow. Plug
There are two shares pre-configured, which means you can start copying files and folders to it straightaway. We wanted to set up additional users and groups, as well as the media server. That was easy, too. By navigating to our router's setup pages in Safari, we identified the IP address its DHCP server had given the My Book, and entering that in another browser window took us to its configuration screen. Here was another pleasant surprise. Its the cleanest and most user-friendly Nas configuration interface we've seen. Setting up users, and activating the iTunes and DLNA servers was a breeze. The backup software supplied is called WD Anywhere Backup, and lets you quickly and easily specify source and destination folders to configure the backup. It matches the My Book World Edition itself for ease of use and friendliness. Our only disappointment with the My Book World Edition was that the remote access feature, which enables you to copy files to and from the device over the web, uses an application from MioNet that's Windows-only. So if you need a Nas that has this feature, you'll have to look elsewhere. It may not be the most fully specified Nas device around, and if you want the security of a Raid array, you'll have to look elsewhere, but for a set-it-up-and-forget-about-it network drive, with automatic backup and a media server included, it's very hard to beat. By Kenny Hemphill
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