Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

I mainly bought it for time machine and for torrent download
Once I upgraded the software the set up of Time machine was easy and straigt forward.
The only problem was that I could not move my old Time Machine backups to "My book World" (as my previous backups were not case sensitive) so I had to start with a new time machine backup.
As I run on WIFI the back ups are slow...

I like very much the Twonky server in the Mbw, I have VLC player on my iMac so I can stream video from Mbw to the iMac

Using the Mbw for storage and time machine it´s very easy, using it for other task it´s complicated

Getting the torrents to work was a pain as they refuse to download unless you edit them (I use torrenteditor) to exclude ALL the UDP trackers... It only allow three active torrents at a time, and ctorrent is buggy...

No luck with WDPhotos on my Nexus S, first I got the "no device" error, later a I got another error, I gave up soon with this one as I prefer using Picasa web albums.

My book world won´t work with iTunes 10.5 with the 1.02.12 (10/19/2011) firmware

No luck either with my Momento digital picture frame as it refuses to connect to My Book World.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

We hope it gives us the additional space needed for photos, etc.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

Great storage device, easy to use.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

Plenty of strage for backup of images.
Easy set up
Mirrored RAID, double safety.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

Installation was very easy and the automatic feature makes back-ups literally effortless.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

This product is very close to plug and play, great for someone who works with computers and udnerstands the lingo, but can't set up their own system from scratch. It's fast, easy to operate, takes very little space, and is intelligently designed. However, the documentation that comes with it is terrible. I had to go back through it several times to understand it and apply it, and sometimes just wing it. Luckily it's nto complicated and I was able to fiure it out. The thing is, it's so simple and easy, teh documentation could have been more concise, direct and accurate. NEeds some serious work.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

The product delivered in a very good condition and is working perfectly.

Thank you very much for keeping all that you state in your order forms!

I will surely choose you again next time although being so far away from my country.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

Best price and fast delivery to Australia. I will buy again from this shop.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

Buy a Synology instead. The read/write speed of this piece of hardware are terrible. It also froze up constantly with the latest firmware(s).

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

I needed a bu and mirror that I didn't have to connect by USB to 3 computers in my house. I finally decided that this would be it, since I valued and trusted Western Digital. [...]The NAS was a little hard to set up, and their bu software does not bu the whole HD, just docs and important files. I wanted everything.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

The hard drive worked right out of the box on my MacBook pro. I couldn't upgrade the firmware through the settings page.

There was no clear description on how to change settings on the hard drive. Etc. But google is my friend.

A lot of space for a decent amount of money. I will connect it to a router and use it wirelessly. For now, I use it through the LAN cable connected straight to my laptop. Which give me about 15mb per second transfer with large files and about 11 with small files. It's perfect for back up, etc. Definitely not for use as a graphics program buffer. Or as a video storage for editing.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

I am using this to store all my photos and music and back up my laptop computers.

It was very easy to set up and get going. The data transfer was a bit slow but not arduous. The transfered data is very easy to access from the laptop and performance is good.

It includes software to automatically backup multiple computers. It was very easy to configure and get going.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

Connected to my iMac7,1 with Snow Leopard and it looks Ok - time machine, the shares. Installation and setup was simple and straight forward. Time machine is a little bit slow, but in general it's fine. The media server works fine with my PS3, probably there was a little slowness at the beginning.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

This devices works nicely as a RAID 1 drive for my photos and videos. However, the shortcoming is that Western Digital, by default, turns on "trustees" [@]. Their default settings essentially say "any user can access any file". For your standard "Windows" user, this is probably OK (although I don't think so). But, if you have Linux servers, it's a bad deal. The solution is a kludge. You need to do two things every boot (or, alternatively, do some hacking of the MBWE). You need to issue the "settrustees -D" command, and you need to edit the /etc/exports file and set the options for the exported partition to "*(rw,no_root_squash)". Kind of a PITA, but it works for Linux users. However, it does cause problems for Windows users which I have not been able to figure out yet.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

The product comes with a very easy program that helps make the installation and use of the hard disk over the network.
Initially I thought the speed through the network was slow. But my connection is 100Mbps. Maybe if I upgrade it to 1Gbps will better.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

Set up was easy, the only problem was that I could not view all the words in the set up wizard. I don't know if it was because I am using Vista, but I couldn't find anyone else having the same problem. I was able to set it up using screenshots from a review of the product. I have all my photos and music on the world book and it mirrors itself and backs up my laptop. Can't wait till we get another laptop and both can access the common data wirelessly.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

I use the WD to hold all my music, pics, videos etc for streaming to apple tv and/or itunes. It works fine for these applications. I like the fact you can easily replace the hardrives if they go down by just pulling out the disk and replacing it. It also has it's own dowloader functionality which means you don't need to have your pc logged on when you're downloading, the application will handle it on it's own. The only thing that's slightly annoying is that the light on the front (indicating it's working) is quite bright if you have it in the bedroom at night.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

I use My Book World Edition II with two PC desktops running Windows XP Pro and a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard. The install and setup is VERY easy. I like being able to access My Book over the internet when I am away from home. The automatic backup is easy to setup and runs by itself. Being a serious photography bug, I have GBs of RAW and JPEG images. I don't have to worry about backing anything up. My Book takes care of all that for me. Well worth the price. Not wanting to loose any of my photos, I have two other 2TB My Book Elites that I use only to back up my photos. I also backup my photos to DVD. You can say overkill but I say better safe than sorry. Look up "Disaster Recovery". You can't have too many backups. Also, the light on the front reminds me of the first Cylon Warriors. So I am an old geek!

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

I had bought a Samsung HDTV and Samsung HTS. I have a large collection of DVD's I purchased ( Blockbuster 4 for $20.00. Sweet! ) but managing separate DVDs turned out to be a PIA. I decided to store all the movies on an NAS so I could get to them from any DLNA device in the house. I settled on the My Book World Edition II because it gave me 2 TB of storage with a mirrored backup at a very reasonable price.

Samsung provides a DLNA server for free. It works but only allows files on a local hard drive. I tried the Twonky server that came with the MWBE II device but it did not play any video on the Samsung. I also tried TVersity but it also failed to play any video on the Samsung. I ran across Mezzmo from Conceiva and it worked immediately. I was also able to create folders and playlists using Mezzmo that made finding a movie easier. Mezzmo has some flaws, like subtitles are an issue, but their support department responded very quickly to my requests for help and they tell me subtitles will be handled in the next major release.

The MBWE II has worked flawlessly. It was easy to setup and, if you have any Linux experience, can be tweaked via a Terminal prompt. I was able to add a private user and store my personal files under that user. The user interface is web based and works great from a Macbook Pro or Windows XP box.

Once all the movies were copied to the NAS Mezzmo allows me to view any movie without getting off my duff!! How sweet is that? If you have a Samsung TV or HTS and want to access all your media from the DLNA service on your TV then Mezzmo and My Book World Edition II are the way to go.

Comments about Western Digital 4TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive:

Ok for starters I want to get this review out for others considering this or the studio edition.
I am a mac user who has used WD before with total satisfaction. This product meets those same expectations but there are a few considerations.
First, I am skilled enough to get myself into trouble, but not enough to know how to easily use some of the more handy, not overly advanced functions of this unit without help from an IT person. This leaves me feeling slightly dissatisfied with it for not immediately being able to unleash its capability. I blame the instruction booklet, which clearly takes you through the menus but tells you nothing an average savy user can figure themselves, to set up the basic functions. ie it isn't exactly simple to grasp the various interfaces and functions of this thing like a regular harddrive unit(but it is much cooler.)
That said..installing on mac was easy. drag and drop files, recommend connecting via router to setup menu, shutting down, connect directly to your ethernet port to transfer large data collections. Speed = file use, streamin & download fast enough. operating menu & large media collection transfer or initial back up is slow unless hardwired with ethernet cable.
again on the wary side, its slightly confusing between signing in to the download folder,or back up folder, making public or private folders, using mio-net, or the twonky media etc, however perhaps its mildly confusing because it looks complex but yet everything is so self explanitory and seemed to work straightforward plug n play that you're sure you aren't getting all it has to offer unless you work in IT.
with ALL that said. on my mac it was plug n play, never installed the disc, as i already had the online manual and use time machine(which works very simply as expected)so no need for the back up software. Mionet software installed directly from the website. only thing disk is needed for would be when i add girlfriends PC to the LAN network where I will need the backup software and and other.(as a mac guy, not looking forward to actually following through the windows set up procedures to add roommates, girlfriends, families computers but i am sure it won't be too bad)
Best pros is that out of the box with little effort, it does give 2TB mirrored at great price, seamlessly streams my video collection, i can open Itunes and access a huge music library i can't store on my computer, and both macs and pcs can all play and backup in the same household, and seems to be easy enough to access it online as well...none of which do you get with a studio edition vs world edition. two different products really. Originally i was looking for storage and backup and simplicity(WD studio) i went for the play, household multi-format,streaming features(world edition),with slightly complex learning curve, but hey if u aren't frustrated with not knowing how to get its full potential unleashed, you won't go wrong.
streaming is fast. Configuration menus and library collection transfer is less than fast over wireless.