WD My Book Live 1TB Personal Cloud Storage NAS Share Files and Photos

by Western Digital

• Centralize and share media on your home network
• View your photo collection with your iPhone
• Stream media to your entertainment center
• Automatic backup with WD SmartWare for Windows
• Compatible with Apple Time Machine

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 2 x 6.6 x 5.5 inches ; 2.4 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00429N16A
• Item model number: WDBACG0010HCH-NESN
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (837 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 29, 2010

Product Description

Size: 1 TB

From the Manufacturer

My Book® Live™ Personal Cloud Storage - Shared storage for computers, tablets, and smartphones.

Connect this powerful drive to your wireless router for shared storage on your home network that you can access within and outside the home. Share files with Mac computers and PCs, stream media to your television through your DLNA™-enabled devices, and access files remotely with the WD 2go app and website.

Create your own personal cloud.
Access your files at home or away with your Mac®, PC, smartphone and iPad®. Stream videos, music, and photos to your connected TV, game console or media player.

Centralized storage and wireless backup.
Connect the drive to your wireless router to provide shared storage and wireless backup for all the PC and Mac computers on your home network.

Brawn and brains for all your applications.
A built-in, high-powered CPU gives you the horsepower you need for the most demanding applications. Stream media seamlessly and transfer files without skipping a beat.

Features at a glance Storage and backup for PC and Mac computers Remote access and apps for your mobile devices Stream media to your entertainment center Built-in 800 MHz CPU for uncompromising speed 3-year limited warranty

Your media and files on your own personal cloud - Create your own personal cloud, without the monthly fees and mysterious location of your data. Store your media and files on the drive and access them securely over the Internet with any PC or Mac computer. Or, use WD's mobile apps for easy access with your tablet or smartphone. It's like having up to 3 TB of extra storage for your mobile device.

Now streaming to your HDTV - Watch your daughter's birthday party video or show off your vacation slideshow on your TV. The built-in media server streams music, photos and movies to any DLNA-certified multimedia device such as a WD TV Live network media player, Blu-ray Disc™ player, Xbox 360®, PlayStation® 3, and connected TV. DLNA 1.5 & UPnP™ certified.

Shared storage for all your computers - Now you can store your entire family's movies, music, photos, and important files to one place for everyone in the home to share. Just plug the drive into your wireless router so that you can store and access files with any PC or Mac computer in your home.

Automatic, wireless backup for all your computers - Protect your precious memories and wirelessly back up all the PC and Mac computers on your network to one reliable location. Windows users can use the included WD SmartWare software and every time you save something, it's instantly backed up. Mac users can utilize all the features of Apple® Time Machine™ backup software to protect their data.

Speed without compromise - Built with an 800 MHz CPU for maximum performance to power all your applications from streaming to remote access. Designed around the most recent advances in Ethernet chip technology, this product delivers best-in-class read speeds faster than traditional USB 2.0 drives.

Serve up your music with iTunes® - The drive includes iTunes server support so you can centralize your music and video collection and stream it to any Mac or PC with iTunes.

Easy to set up, easy to find on your network- Set up is a snap. In just a few minutes, you're up and running. Mac, Windows® 7, and Windows Vista® computers will automatically find your My Book Live drive in seconds. If you're running Windows XP, our simple discovery software makes it easy to set up the drive.

Ideal for

• Storing your digital media collection on your wired or wireless network
• Sharing videos, music, and photos with all the computers on your network
• Backing up data from all the PCs and Mac computers in your home
• Viewing photos and files with your iPhone®, iPad®, iPod touch®, or Android™ smartphone
• Streaming media to your Blu-ray Disc™ players, game consoles, media players, or other DNLA/UPnP devices on your home network

What's in the box
Network drive, Ethernet cable, AC power adapter, Installation and software CD, Quick Install Guide.

Compatibility
Windows XP (SP3), Windows Vista, Windows 7
Mac OS® X Leopard or Snow Leopard
DLNA/UPnP enabled devices

For more great WD products, visit the Western Digital Store at Amazon.com

Home Network Storage Comparison Chart My Book Live My Book Live Duo Shared storage for computers, tablets and smartphones. Dual-drive shared storage for computers, tablets and smartphones.   Interface Gigabit Ethernet Gigabit Ethernet   Capacity range 1 TB - 3 TB 4 TB - 6 TB   Automatic Backup   Compatible with Apple® Time Machine®   Mac and PC compatible   Unlimited computer backups   Securly share files with unlimited users   Stream to connected devices with integrated DLNA server   WD 2go™ secure remote access   WD 2go File viewer mobile app   WD Photos™ Photo viewer mobile app   RAID 1 enabled for double-safe backup     User serviceable

Product Description

Simplify your digital life by consolidating your movies, music, photos, and files in one location for everyone on your wired or wireless network to share with a Western Digital My Book Live Network-Attached Storage drive.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

285 of 291 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Bad reviews are real - file I/O performance slows over time August 22, 2012

By Kenneth F. Krutsch

Size Name:3 TB

I won't re-hash what others have said, but the drive I/O performance (or lack thereof) is a real problem - especially with Time Machine.

I have this device hard-wired into my router (Gb connection) and my MacBook Pro is also hard-wired into the same router. My initial Time Machine backup went with reasonable speed, but subsequent, incremental updates to the drive started dragging. I found that if I reboot the WD MyBook Live, it works better for a period of time, but then slows down. With wired, Gb networking end-to-end the Time Machine performance should be on par with my 800Mb Firewire portable drive, but it's not even close. Even just copying files via the Mac Finder over the (wired) network to the drive is agonizingly slow.

That said, however, their iPhone app and web-based access tools are some of the best I've seen from this product category, so I will keep the device and see if things improve with a future software update; hence the 3 stars.

Finally, I was hoping to use the DLNA server to stream high-resolution FLAC files to my network receiver (Denon DNP-720AE)... don't even think about doing that. The WD MyBook Live comes with an old version of Twonky Media Server that is incredibly buggy. Really, one of the most frustrating experiences I've had with a gadget in recent memory. There are instructions on the web to allow you to hack your drive and update the Twonky server, but I just don't have the time for that - especially since I have little faith that an updated version of the atrocious (and appropriately named) Twonky Media Server will be any better.

UPDATE: Well, two weeks later... I decided to try manually upgrading the Twonky Media Server to 7.0.9 Special (version specific to NAS devices). If you Google around, you will find step-by-step directions on how to do this; if you are not afraid to ssh into the device and manually download and install software on the embedded Linux system, you will find it is time well spent. Twonky version 7.X seems to function correctly and is robust; I am happily streaming 24/96 FLAC files to my Denon, using the Android App BubbleUPnP as the control point. Works great.

However, the Time Machine issue remains a show-stopper. I really *do* need to periodically reboot the drive or Time Machine incremental updates never finish. That is, it takes more than an hour to backup a single GB of changes (over a wired Gb network) and then it starts all over again. Rebooting the WD MyBook Live and restarting the Time Machine backup moves very quickly through the backup process. If I don't see a software update from WD in the next couple of weeks, I will have to move Time Machine backups to another device. Of course, it's possible that the issue is with Mac OS X (mountain lion); time will tell, I guess, but I find it odd that I can restart the WD and it moves fast, again. Restarting Mac OS X and restarting Time Machine does NOT seem to speed things up, on its own.

UPDATE 2 (Sep 2012): Well, more time has passed and WD has released a F/W update. From what I can tell, the update did nothing to correct the problems I describe above. However, I finally decided to SSH back into the device and see if I could figure out things on my own. There is a daemon located in /usr/local/mediacrawler that seems to be the culprit. I removed the executable bit and restarted the device. File I/O performance with Time Machine and AFP file copies has drastically improved. The mediacrawlerd program was absolutely hogging the device's processor to the point of seriously degrading file I/O performance. FWIW, I posted my discovery on the WD support forum but have heard nothing back. Who knows what mediacrawler is supposed to do, but for my use cases it seems nothing useful. Time Machine backups and the Twonky Media Server run like champs! It's inexcusable that WD isn't aware of this issue, but in scanning the WD support forums they don't seem too responsive to customer complaints. I don't like writing bad reviews, but unless you are willing to SSH into the drive and upgrade/manage the embedded software, you should avoid this NAS device.

UPDATE 3 (Oct 2012): WD MyBook Live has an embedded program called mediacrawler. I am not sure what mediacrawler does (I think it is indexing files for use by the remote access tools), but it severely degrades file I/O performance.

I started noticing that TimeMachine backups were never completing - even with very small changes to my local HDD. Time Machine would sit forever trying to complete a 60MB (yeah, MEGAbyte) backup. And this is running Gb ethernet between the MacBook and the WD MyBookLive (i.e. not wireless). When I stopped Time Machine, I noticed that the HDD activity light on the MyBook Live would keep flicker forever.

I SSH'd into the box and ran 'top'. Lo and behold, mediacrawler is using a huge amount of CPU and never stops running. Sometimes it would help things to reboot the system - for a while - but eventually the drive gets back into the same state. So, I've updated to the latest version of the firmware. Nothing improved with mediadcrawlerd. While mediacrawler *is* using a lot of CPU, the much larger problem is the constant disk contention. After I removed the exec bit from mediacrawerd and restarted, Time Machine is (again) running like a champ. I am watching the Time Machine window report only five hourse remaining for 250 GB of 510 GB. Not bad.

With mediacrawler disabled, the Time Machine performance is very acceptable. However, it's clear that no one at WD is testing Time Machine backups for performance and while I have posted this finding on the WD support forum, no one seems to care.

UPDATE 4 (May 2013): WD MyBook Live STILL has an embedded program called mediacrawler, after the recent update. You STILL need to SSH into the box to disable that daemon. Again, I have no idea what that program does, but disabling it does nothing to change the functionality of WD2go or Twonky Media Server, as far as I can tell.

Since writing the initial review, I have changed out both my Windows laptop and my MacBook Pro (to a Lenovo Yoga w/ Windows 8 and MacBook Pro Retina). The Windows 8 file access performance is quite a bit faster than the Mac, anecdotally speaking - I haven't taken the time to formally measure, but syncing the same set of files between the machines is a night and day difference.

The latest firmware update does seem to work better with Mac OS - I have the belief that the performance problems are a combination of Mac OS's poor handling of NAS shares with Time Machine and a poor Apple File Protocol handler on the WD MyBook Live (afpd). I say this because even scanning a directory or copying files from my Mac (over Gb ethernet) is slower than it should be; especially compared to my Windows laptop.

That said, with the new update, my Time Machine backups are at least finishing in a reasonable amount of time and I can support backups from two Mac Books at the same time.

Still 3 stars - all of this was way too much work for most folks to deal with and I cannot recommend this drive to others. Spend more money and buy a commercial NAS alternative, like QNap or Synology.

The manufacturer commented on the review below

217 of 237 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Works great for Sonos.. October 28, 2010

By Thomas B Goodloe

Size Name:1 TB

Yesterday I purchased one of these drives to use as a Network Attached Storage drive for my Sonos music system. This drive is perfect for that setup and exceeded my expectations. The setup for this drive is a snap. My PC and Sonos system recognized it with zero issues. The drive throughput is about 70Mb/s which is plenty for my purposes. Also (and a key feature for Sonos), this drive will spin down after inactivity and will even let you set how long it waits before spinning down (have not seen any other drive in this price range which will do that). Also, this drive comes pre-formatted with an NTFS file system so no reformatting is needed like with most external drives. Having a drive with NAS capabilities is excellent because you need less hardware to make the drive available to Sonos. Lastly, because the drive doesn't have an on/off switch, you won't have to worry if you lose power that you'll have to turn this back on (like with the old Linksys NSLU2).

The only reason I don't give this five stars is because the "access over the web" part of the feature set is misleading. What you might expect is that this drive is available over the web through some sort of login and without the need of a PC to facilitate. Unfortunately you need all of those things to make this drive accessible over the web. The software WD provides to enable this, "MioNet", seems dated and rickety- not to mention NOT free. If leaving your PC on is acceptable for you, might I recommend downloading the Opera web browser and using their "Unite" service which will provide many of the same services as MioNet- but for *free*.

Overall a strong purchase and a nice product. If you have a Sonos system and want your music available, then this is the drive you need.

The manufacturer commented on this review (What's this?)

Tony Andrews "WD Branded Products... saysNovember 7, 2010

Hello Thomas -

Glad to hear you are enjoying your new My Book Live as a companion for your Sonos system.

For remote access, you can actually set up a free Mionet account that lets you access your My Book Live from any Web browser.

To set up the account, simply type "MybookLive" into your browser and you will open up the Dashboard for the device. Within the Dashboard, select Settings / Remote Access / Mionet and click on "Create new account" to set up a free username and password. This free Mionet account will then let you access the contents of your drive from any Internet Connected PC or Mac.

Simply go to Mionet.com, type in your user name and password and you can access . You can also share specific folders or the entire drive secure. If you have an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Android phone, you can also access all your photos in a cool viewer app (also for free) called WD Photos.

The PC application that you discovered on mionet.com lets you access your PC as well as the drive, but that does involve an annual fee. Thanks for your feedback. We will try to make this clearer so other users will not be confused about how to use our free remote access service.

WD Branded Products Team

86 of 91 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bad Reviews Don't Reflect Latest Software January 15, 2012

By Tom

Size Name:2 TB

I found the product I got to be way better than the reviews indicated. The main reason seems to be software updates. You should really ignore any complaints you read about the device from 2010, and a lot of them from 2011. The physical hardware is just a basic drive with a processor and a network connection. What makes a difference is the software - both on the drive, and the mybooklive website/iphone apps. Most of the complaints I was worried about turned out to have been fixed in the latest software. For example: A review complained about iTunes media sharing being broken by the latest iTunes update - I had no problem doing iTunes media sharing with the latest iTunes. A review complained about the Mio-net connectivity - This device no longer uses Mio-net.

The mybooklive website lets you map your home mybook live drive as a network drive from any computer away from home. Its like at work where you have a network drive, but this is your home drive. You do have to keep in mind the data speeds are limited by the speed of your home internet connection. I also use the iphone apps. They have some cool features like caching built in. So when I pull down some pictures, they get stored on my iphone so that looking at them multiple times is quick. And the cache has a configurable limit.

Setup is super easy. With almost no configuration I got iTunes media streaming, sharing of videos and pictures on my PS3, mapping this as a network drive to a relative's computer, and mapping this drive to computers in my house. Consolidating data to a central spot is something everyone wants to do, and there are a lot of network drives out there. But the sofware that comes with this device that makes everything so easy is what really makes the difference.

One last note - you will need to backup this drive. As a single drive it is vulnerable. A super cool feature is that this drive actually has software to back itself up. You tell it a computer on your network to use (any computer it can see works, you don't need a special kind), and it will perform the backup to that computer. This means your data, as well as all the permissions you setup on the drive. So it might be a good idea to buy a cheap extra drive that you will use as a backup to your backup.