Western Digital My Book Live 3 TB Personal Cloud Storage Drive (WDBACG0030HCH-NESN)

 

 

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Fantastic value, sub $190 in later 2011, if you need just what this does. Some significant shortcomings. A rip-off at list price of $299, but who pays that? Obviously as time passes, prices will fall and this will rapidly be obsoleted.

This device sits off your wired network, and acts as a network attached storage (NAS) device. If you don't have a wired network, then it's probably not the best thing to buy. (indeed, if you don't you're probably mostly better off buying a USB/eSATA drive, which will be cheaper).

The advantage of this type of drive is that it will serve media (video, images, and audio/music) without any computer in your network being on. Nice.

This lets you pull videos (and other media) off it to your PS3/Xbox 360 (maybe Wii), or Android phone/tablet, or iPhone/iPad. All while your computer(s) are off/busy. Note that the Android/iPad/iPhone functionality is annoying in that to function properly on Apple devices, it eschews DLNA and relies on a custom WD app to provide a mere 24 hours of access at a time (based on obtaining a PIN and typing it in to your mobile device).

Annoying.

Straight DLNA (talking to and feeding video to ultra-modern TVs/consoles) works nicely, and WD includes a v5 build of the Twonky media server in the firmware. (Basically this lets the box chat to PS3's and the like). Downside of this is that it doesn't include the features of Twonky 6, so specifically it doesn't support playing MKV's on a PS3 or Xbox. Pity, as the device is theoretically capable of doing so.

It includes backup software -- note that this is not imaging backup -- which seems to do a decent basic version backup of documents, media, data, etc., as long as you specify what is to be backed up. This is definitely not "quick disaster recovery" backup, but they don't claim that it is. This is more "oh dear, someone deleted the wrong file last week" type backup.

Configuration is reasonably straightforward; WD has clearly gone to some lengths here. Once I got the device installed (a marginally painful process given that WD didn't seem to consider one might follow firmware update instructions during installation), it worked very nicely.

A fairly elegant (though sluggish) web interface made most tasks very easy.

Compared to low-cost NAS's from other companies, this is reasonably polished and performs quite well, as long as you can accept that WD doesn't supply/support more advanced versions of the media server they bundle.

If you want a low-cost reasonable quality NAS, and are prepared to put up with WD's bizarre software limitations (e.g., 24h limits on mobile access, no MKV), this is an excellent choice. I bought one, and liked it so much I bought two more, though I remain irritated at the lack of support for MKV on the PS3.

Great unit for the price I paid from the only brand I trust in hard drives. It's not as fast as USB connected storage but it more convenient for my needs as I can now stream supported music/video formats directly to my PS3 without needing a computer.

I have just receive this NAS today. Seems to have trouble with Lion people but I have Snow Leo so I thought I would give it a try.

All I got was errors after it finally connected to the network.

I get the error:
"Something is wrong with the volume's CNID DB, using temporary CNID DB instead. Check server's messages for details. Switching to read-only mode."

What this means is that I can not add files to the NAS.

Called the costumer service line and they told me that they have problems with lion and snow leopard and do not know when the issue is going to get resolve maybe in a week, month or never. If you check amazon.com there are several people with problems on Macs.

Email support reccomended my doing a factory restore and update the firmware again - I did that and now it will not connect to the network

I do not recommend that you buy this, and I am returning mine.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Not plug and play with Mac
I expected a plug and play solution with use of our fairly new iMac. After many frustrating hours of trying to make MyBookLive's backup work via our wireless router, I have... Read more

Published 8 months ago by Apple User

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