Hardware Geeks

Last week we received the 2TB model of the MyBook World Edition II which has two 1TB Green edition hard drives in it formatted in mirrored (redundant) RAID1. The advantage of RAID1 over using both drives as a single volume (RAID0/JBOD), is that if and when a hard drive does fail you still have a complete copy of your data and can ensure your data is safe and secure. The World Edition II makes disaster recovery for small business and home offices simple and cheap. In the event that disaster does befall, the World Edition II has a very simple method for swapping out the dead drive for the new drive and then will automatically rebuild the live drive onto the backup drive making a complete disaster recovery solution. 

The new World Edition II network attached storage device build on the World Edition with new features and a new design that uses less power and generates less heat by moving to the Green line of Western Digital hard drives. Setup and initial configuration took less than 10 minutes, most of which was figuring out where to plug the power for it in to since I’m a bit short on power outlets around my desk currently. One small note here though, the Ethernet cable it ships with is short (about 2.5ft), and is only capable of 10/100M not 1000M. Swapping out the cable to another though had it come up at the full available speed. To configure the device just stick in the CD to your computer, for Windows based computers you’ll have two applications available to install. WD Discovery a client application to help you find and configure your device. On both OSX and Windows you’ll have a Western Digital Backup application available to install.

To configure the device the default username and password is: admin/admin

Under OSX to access the device open up Finder and in the left hand column you’ll see mybookworld show in the network share list. Initially it will only have a text file to help you through your initial configuration.

When you create new users for your system (which is optional, but is advisable for security purposes), you have the option of encrypting there private share making an extra layer of security past just blocking unknown people from accessing your primary network shares. The screen though to lock down security on your network shares can be a bit hard to find. It’s under Advanced Mode, Users then Folder Share Permissions. By clicking the edit icon to the right of each share you can modify who can read and edit files on each one.

To do a burn in test on the NAS I went ahead and copied about 400GB of data over to it. And here’s where I was surprised, the write speed for the device we tested was very low. It peaked at about 14MB/s on a gigabit Ethernet connection. While 14MB is still 112Mb, if you have a very large data set copying it over initially can take awhile. In my case about 13hr’s. I will check with Western Digital though to see if maybe I have early firmware or something that may be affecting throughput.  However read speed was pretty much where I’d expect it to be, peaking around 40MB/s or about 320Mb/s. Plenty for streaming content. Which it can do to all the most common media applications and devices. Featuring streaming support for iTunes, Windows Media Player, XBOX360 and PlayStation 3 out of box. Also since it supports DLNA it can send streaming media to most general networked devices such as audio receivers and digital picture frames.

Once the burn in was done, I went ahead and played with the Western Digital Anywhere Backup application that’s bundled with all of the World Edition II’s. The bundled copy comes with licenses for five separate pc’s. I compared Anywhere Backup to Time Machine and Windows Backup in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2. I personally found the configuration, speed, and constant popup notifications a bit cumbersome when compared to Apple and Microsoft’s offerings. By default Anywhere Backup will not backup anything other than portions of your C: drive. It will not backup anything unless you have the window for it in the foreground. And during initial configuration it tells you that you need to edit these settings in advanced options in a window with the exact same name as the one you’re already on.

If you go to the next screen after you then get the Advanced Options it’s mentioning, but having it reference a window name that’s already open is a bit confusing. It also doesn’t help in the case of system drive failure. Which both Time Machine and Windows Backup and Restore can do, with an easier and less intrusive style. If you’re on an older version of OSX or Windows that doesn’t have built in backup though, it does give you basic protection.

For advanced users, there is an option to turn on SSH in to the NAS along with a file sharing web server frontend over port 80 or ssl alongside an optional ftp server. By default these three services are turned off.  After connecting via SSH you’ll find that the NAS is running a slim line build of Linux 2.6.24.4. So with a bit of Linux know how and some tweaking you could easily extend this NAS to do pretty much anything as long as it’s not too RAM and CPU intensive. From SSH I found out some more of the specifications on the device. It ships with 128MB of RAM, and is running an ARM CPU (ARM92EJ-S) clocked at 500MHz.

In summary, this device covers largely the full gamut of users. From basic users who just need a dead simple storage device with recovery. To advanced users that want to get down and dirty and hack the hell out of the thing. It offers it all, with only two minor caveats. Namely the automatic backup program isn’t quite what I’d call usable for anything important and the write speed seemed a lot lower than it should (for the write speed issue though I already have an email in to Western Digital to see if it’s normal or something with my specific setup).

Cost:
2TB $399.99
4TB $699.99

Plusses:
Dead simple configuration and use
Easy and Advanced mode so all users can get the most of the device
Simple replacement in case of drive failure
Silent
Low heat output
Tweak friendly

Downsides:
Surprisingly low write speed
Backup utility isn’t comparable to bundled backup in Windows and OSX

We award the MyBook World Edition II our 4 Star Editors Choice Award!

Post Tags: storage  wd  mybook 

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