WD My Book Live Network Attached Hard Disk Review
by Ganesh T S on October 11, 2011 6:30 AM EST- Posted in
- NAS
- Western Digital
- My Book Live
Western Digital provides the WD2go and WD2go Pro apps for the iOS and Android devices. Together with the WD2go remote access via website, they form the personal cloud solution for the My Book Live. In this section, we will go over the WD2go Android app features as well as the web remote access solution. The WD2go Pro app provides extra security, sharing options and Dropbox like syncing functionality. However, we will just be looking at the free basic version in this section.
Upon initial launch, the Android WD2go app asks for an activation code which needs to be generated via the web interface of the My Book Live. After this code is input, one can see the attached devices on that network (I am assuming that multiple My Book Live units on a single network will end up with the same activation code). A few taps later, one can view and navigate the shares. The WD2go app settings include a configurable cache size (for storage of downloaded content) and the ability to clear it. The app also remembers a list of recently accessed files, which can also be cleared.
The app downloads the chosen file and launches it in the linked application. I was able to get this to work without issues for both pictures and music files. Pictures had to be fully downloaded for viewing on the mobile device.
Music files were streamed without any problems. Playback was started even before the file was downloaded in full. Videos were quite picky, though. I had to install RockPlayer Lite / Doubletwist in order to stream the videos. Since there is no transcoding going on at the My Book Live end, we are severely limited with respect to the nature of the video files which can be played back.
An interesting aspect is the connectivity status reported in the web interface. A relay connection implies that the data goes through WD's data center. A direct connection is obviously better in terms of performance. It is suggested that turning on uPnP in the router could help with this.
The PC WD2go feature is set up by registering an e-mail address for remote access. Clicking on the sign-up link set via e-mail enables the registering of a WD2go account on the WD2go.com website. A Java program loads in the background upon selecting the device on the webpage. This mounts the share as a network drive on the local machine.
Western Digital's personal cloud solution is quite effective in providing access to the My Book Live over the Internet, be it from a mobile device or a remote computer. Unlike other NAS vendors who require open ports in the router / expect users to register for a dynamic DNS service, WD's model is perfect for the mainstream consumer.
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haukionkannel - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Yes it is illegal to copy youd dvd and blu-ray to hard disk... You are bypassing the copy protection and that is illegal..In any way it is possible to do it. And that is the reason why there is big disk like this... Am I delusionar or am I?
But yeah, It would be nice to play your "own" vidoes etc from external hard disk instead of optical disk that are doomed to be worn out some day...
CoreyAR - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
I believe that copying a DVD, BluRay, anything that you personally own and using it under the rights granted to you by owning the original disc is not illegal...it is called fair use.However if you freely distribute the content then you are probably breaking the license that you obtained when you purchased the material and are then breaking the law.
akedia - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Copying it is fair use, but circumventing DRM to do so is illegal, so though you have the right to copy your own media for your own usage, you cannot legally do what would be required to do so in most cases.Death666Angel - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
What countries legal system are we talking about here? The legality of back up copies, circumvention of DRM etc. can differ widely from one country to another. :-)EJ257 - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Yes but if you are doing it purely for personal reason then there is no way the MPAA or RIAA would find out anyway. Sure it is technically illegal to circumvent the DRM on the disc but if your doing it behind closed doors (and windows) and you don't upload the rip to the web then who would know? Is your wife/gf going to report you? Are your friends who come over to watch that movie MPAA secret police?slick121 - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
hehe good post!!iamezza - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
Holy crap batman! 71C with an ambient temp of 25C this is utterly ridiculous for a hard drive to run this hot, there is no way it will last long term running so hot.dertechie - Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - link
That's after 4 hours of 300GB of simultaneous reads and writes, basically the HDD equivalent of Prime95. He never actually told us what it was running at under normal conditions (and since he didn't seem too concerned, I'm betting it's <50C). Come to think of it, the external 3TB drive they reviewed a while ago did that too under torture.You'll hit that temp for initial back up, and then never again.
I'd buy one of these, but the concept of 2TB+ drives without redundancy scares the crap out of me.
ganeshts - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
With sporadic accesses, the hdd temperature hovers around 55 C. Not alarming, but worth a note.projektsun - Wednesday, October 12, 2011 - link
Any chance of a peak inside? Any way to upgrade ram in this? ALSO... why not put a 7200RPM hd in this? Heat?