WD debuts My Book World Edition NAS, we go hands-on

While some NAS devices can get a bit unwieldy or unsightly, that is thankfully not the case with Western Digital's new My Book World Edition, which keeps things clean and simple without skimping on the features most folks are looking for. Available in 1TB and 2TB capacities ($230 and $450, respectively) this one boasts both DLNA 1.5 and UPnP certification to allow for streaming with a variety of devices, and it packs a single USB port to let you turn any other USB drive into a network drive, though you're out of luck if you were hoping to plug a printer in there. What's more, our pals at Engadget Spanish have already managed to get their hands on one, and they've naturally wasted no time doing a complete unboxing. Hit up the gallery below for a closer look, and be sure to check back later for their full impressions.

WD debuts My Book World Edition NAS, we go hands-on

[ROFL Posted Feb 18th 2009 5:35PM]

Glossy white...




I like. =)

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 5:35PM]

That looks kinda chunky. Dual hard drives?

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 6:24PM]

According to CNET it is only one drive, so no RAID configuration and back-up options. I think that is why they added the USB port

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 19th 2009 8:49PM]

The USB port is for adding additional storage, not for connecting to a computer.

There are single-drive and dual-drive versions with RAID.

[spasewalkr Posted Feb 18th 2009 5:36PM]

damn. its been a busy week for engadget spanish, hasn't it?

[Gravy Posted Feb 18th 2009 5:40PM]

Looks like they've done away with the morse code air vents...

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 5:42PM]

my My Book 500gb died on me and I lost all that information...

[Sibuna Posted Feb 18th 2009 5:43PM]

Your pr0n committed suicide?

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 5:49PM]

pretty much. Tenticle porn strangled the hard drive :-/

[Sibuna Posted Feb 18th 2009 5:56PM]

Ouch.

[tavisjohn Posted Feb 18th 2009 6:21PM]

I have had 4 WD MyBook drives fail on me in the last 4 months. I opened them to find that the black paint on the drives, was BUBBLED!!! The drive did not just fail, it literally BURNED UP!!! (And this happened within a month of the warranty expiring)

So I do not trust any of the MyBook drives!

I have replaced them with external boxes that take 2 drives and automatically mirror the data. So if a drive fails, I still have my data!

[citanul Posted Feb 18th 2009 5:44PM]

Have they done away with the limitations on media sharing?

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 5:44PM]

Does it support auto-backup, meaning mirroring? Does it support Torrents?

[TheAdamKramer Posted Feb 18th 2009 5:56PM]

i owned one of these like 2 months ago and it sucked....what has changed????

[T1dal Posted Feb 18th 2009 6:22PM]

I want to know too. Had one as well and the throughput SUCKED on my gigabit network even after tweaking.

[Nomadic0ne Posted Feb 18th 2009 6:01PM]

I'm curious to see if they fixed the speed issues that plagued the first gen of these.
It had a gigabit ethernet port, but was ungodly slow due to the internals used.
However the DLNA 1.5 and UPnP certification and the fact that the USB port is actually functional are very nice additions.
I guess we'll see...

[bob e Posted Feb 18th 2009 6:03PM]

First there was My Computer, then My Phone... now My Book

Where will it end?

[andrewh12 Posted Feb 18th 2009 6:05PM]

What´s so new about it? I bought mine a few months ago, white, NAS and 1 TB.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 6:06PM]

My vote is for pogoplug over this, the price difference is a no brainer, especially with web portal.

http://www.pogoplug.com/

[magic6435 Posted Feb 18th 2009 6:35PM]

Chime: "Put all of your stuff on a droooboooo" http://www.drobo.com/

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 6:44PM]

I have the first version of this and it works pretty well. The only major drawback is the bundled mionet crap that WD forces on you. If you are going to buy this go to http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/start which has everything you need to know to really make this thing shine.

[Learethak Posted Feb 18th 2009 7:20PM]

Mionet does indeed suck. The OTHER drawback is that it is running a little bitty linux system in there and uses one of the Linux FS. Sooo...if your linux-fu is not strong and the guts die you will have to do what one of my recent clients had to do and hire a professional geek to move the data off of it onto another media.

[daskino Posted Feb 18th 2009 7:18PM]

I hope this will work with the Wd TV, then you have a net enabled media center

[nowayman Posted Feb 18th 2009 7:58PM]

i thought thats 2.5" for a sec..

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 9:11PM]

i want this .. plz..

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 9:43PM]

Thanks for the feedback! The "New" My Book World Edition has been vastly improved. When developing this product we made sure that we put an emphasis on performance and included the advanced features our customers were asking for.

Here is a short list of features that you will find in the new product:

Auto discovery with Vista and Mac computers
DLNA 1.5 / UPnP Media Server (TwonkyMedia)
SSH Enabled
iTunes Server
FTP Server
Remote Web Access
Email alert system for critical events
CIFS/SMB, AFP and NFS support

I appreciate everyone's feedback!

-ScottWD

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 10:09PM]

"Thanks for the feedback! The "New" My Book World Edition has been vastly improved."

Scott-- But what about all of us first-generation MyBook World Edition owners who caught the short end of the OxNAS kernel module shaft?


The drives (65+ MByte/sec sustained I/O), networking (GigE chip) and backplane chipset (Oxford Semiconductor OX800DSE) on the first-generation MyBook World Edition boards doesn't suck, but the kernel module implementation does (massive interrupt overhead in ehci-oxnas), hence the miserable (7 to 10 MByte/sec) max throughput.

I event went so far as to try and contact Oxford Semiconductor directly in writing almost a year and a half ago, but they never replied.


For reference...

# uptime
20:51:54 up 235 days, 23:51, 0 users, load average: 0.07, 0.02, 0.00

# uname -a
Linux WhirledBook 2.6.17.14 #1 PREEMPT Mon Mar 26 12:36:33 BST 2007 armv5tejl GNU/Linux

http://www.oxsemi.com/products/storage/OXE800DSE.html

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 11:09PM]

Thanks for participating, Scott. Personally I've experienced none of the horror stories others have shared in this thread -- my six 1- and 2TB WD My Books are all going strong so far, problem-free. (Of course now I'm a little worried . . . . )

What I'd like to know is: now that 1-TB 3.5-inch single-platter drives are being manufactured, when can we expect to find 2TB My Books in a single-size "book" form factor -- and even more important, when will we see 3- and 4TB drives in the double-wide book form?

Thanks.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 18th 2009 11:07PM]

typo: s/ehci-oxnas/ox800sata and libata/

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 19th 2009 9:32AM]

I agree with a lot of these other comments. A battery of this, the My Book Mirror and the WD TV may provide a complete solution for most people (although having them in one package would be better).

When to we get to see the new 2TB disk in the Mirror? Or, can we have a RAID NAS My Book?

[Sir Jimbob Posted Feb 19th 2009 12:46AM]

My 2TB MyBookWorld comes tomorrow from NewEgg. :facepalm:

[pika2000 Posted Feb 19th 2009 1:03AM]

Why one would want a NAS without any redundancy?

[scowan Posted Feb 19th 2009 4:23AM]

Hmm they just slapped their old World book in a new case, they didn't even change the capacity

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 20th 2009 1:13AM]

doe this support torrents?

[barCODE Posted Feb 20th 2009 2:58AM]

Add firewire 800 and esata to this drive, then I'll buy two!