Western Digital My Book World Edition 1TB

As is so easy these days I recently found myself running out of hard disk space, so I decided to invest in a new external hard drive. After some time browsing the internet I chose the Western Digital My Book World Edition 1TB.

OK, so strictly speaking this isn’t gaming hardware, but if you clear off all the stuff you’ve got clogging up your hard drive you’ll have more room for games! The big advantage of the My Book World Edition is that it is a network device, connecting to your PC through your router instead of a USB cable. This has big benefits in terms of speed and accessibility as connecting to the drive through your router allows you to access it from any computer on your home network. This means you can access your videos, pictures and music through any device that connects to your router, such as a desktop PC or a wireless laptop.

What Do You Get With The My Book World Edition?

The My Book comes in a black box that highlights the best features of the drive as well as possible storage capacities e.g. 440 hours of DVD quality video on the 1TB version. Open the box and you’ll find the My Book drive held securely in place, the power lead (with 2 and 3-pin adapters) as well as a Quick Install guide, the installation disk and a network cable.

The My Book World Edition is a stylish device. It is a very simple design, just a glossy white enclosure with a vertical strip of white LEDs on the front while the power button and sockets are hidden away at the back. It is about the same size as a thick paperback book at 5.8cm (W) x 14.7cm (D) x 17.3cm (H) and is designed to sit upright.

The white LEDs serve two functions – one is to tell you that the drive is in use using a Knight-Rider style up-and-down motion. The second function is to give you a quick clue as to how full the drive is – when inactive the LEDs fill up the strip and when it is completely lit you know that the drive is nearly full.

The installation disk holds the detailed documentation for the drive, as well as three important bits of software (for Windows and Mac):

• WD Discovery Tool – this allows you to search your network, detect any Western Digital drives and quickly configure them.
• WD Anywhere Backup – automatic network backup software that allows any computer on the network to backup onto the My Book
• MioNet – a service that allows you to access the files on your My Book from anywhere over the internet

This is the new version of the My Book World Edition. The networked My Book has been around for a while now but has recently received an overhaul and a new model number, which in this case is the WD10000H1NC, not the older WDG1NC10000. The new one-terabyte World Edition now has faster transfer speeds than the old models as well as replacing old blue LEDs on the front for the new white ones.

Installing The My Book World Edition

According to the quick guide it should simply be a case of plugging the power cable into the My Book and then plugging it into a spare ethernet socket on your router. You then run the WD Discovery Tool to detect the drive and configure any shares.

Hmm, it’s not quite that simple as the Discovery software failed to detect the drive, simply stating that there were ‘no network drives available’ with no clue as to what to do next. The My Book was definitely plugged in and working and the router had detected the connection. I played with my firewall settings, and checked that DHCP was enabled on my PC, all to no avail. So I had a quick look on the Western Digital Support site for answers – nope, nothing useful. I then tried the documentation on the disk.

In there was one useful bit of info – the My Book can be accessed through a browser by navigating to http://mybookworld/. I fired up internet explorer and tried the address and bingo! There was the login screen for the drive (which proved it was working) and, using the default admin login, I was led through a quick setup wizard. One of the questions it asks is whether you want to use DHCP to get an IP address for the drive, or to use a static IP address. I chose DHCP, finished the wizard and returned to my desktop.

At this point the WD Discovery software was still running and, as if by Magic, it was now showing an entry for the My Book. Something in that setup wizard had made the drive visible over the network, and from there on I was able to map the two default shares (public and downloads).

Using The My Book World Edition

The My Book uses a fan-less enclosure, instead cooling the hard drive through vents along the top and back of the enclosure. With the drive sitting on a shelf next to my computer desk it is very easy to forget that it’s there, as it is very quiet when in use.

With a terabyte of capacity to play with, I’ve now got plenty of space for all of the usual digital stuff – videos, pictures, MP3s. Transfer speeds are good – copying a 1GB file from my wired PC to the drive gave speeds of about 16MBps while copying back from the drive to the PC came in at around 10MBps. This is obviously not as quick as an eSata drive but is much better than my portable USB hard drive.

I installed the WD Backup Software but decided not to let it backup everything on C:, as it wants to by default. Instead, I just went for specific folders, such as My Documents, and decided to control any other backups myself. The interface to the Backup Software is OK, but it’s the background stuff that’s important. Once you’ve told the software which folders you want it will automatically backup files to the My Book, and will even queue files for backup if you’re disconnected from the drive – which is great for laptops.

Conclusion

Overall I’m very pleased with the My Book. It looks good, works well and does exactly what I wanted. The only thing that let it down was the installation procedure which didn’t go as smoothly as anticipated, but I got there in the end. If you’re after a network storage device with good capacity then I can definitely recommend the Western Digital My Book World Edition.

Where To Buy A My Book World Edition

Western Digital quote a retail price of £229 for the 1TB World Edition, but my own My Book was bought from Amazon for £174 and arrived early the next day. There is a 2TB version of the World Edition but at the time of writing it was well out of my price range at £330, so I went for the cheaper 1TB. I can always buy another drive when I’ve filled the first, and prices will have dropped by then.

US buyers can get the 1TB My Book from Amazon for as little as $169 (retail $219) while the 2TB is only $269 (instead of $379 retail).