Customer Reviews

Western Digital WDXE2500JBN 250 GB Net Center

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Between my wife and I, we've got six computers. Three PCs and three Macs, two of which are G4 laptops using 802.11g. Keeping a centralized "vault" of MP3s and JPEGs gets to be a real pain in the keister.

This dedicated Network Attached Storage (NAS) device makes it super easy. I was trying to decide whether or not to resurrect an old Athlon 1900XP to act as a dedicated file server (using Red Hat or what not), bringing our net total of operational machines to 7. I decided that spending 317 bucks on a 250GB NAS device was worth it.

Five minutes after coming home with the product, I had it up and running. Ten minutes after that, I had all six computers set-up to use the NAS.

We filled this drive up pretty quick. Between our music library, numerous pictures of our daughter, iMovies, backed-up school papers, and Photoshop files, we ran out of space real fast. Which is where the "room for expansion" thing kicks in. You can chain more Western Digital drives to this device (WD calls it "claiming"). Using either a dedicated external USB 2.0 drive or the "dual-option back-up" drives with USB 2.0/Firewire 400, you can add more drives to the network. We purchased one of the dual option 250GB WD drives and added it to the network in less time that it took to add the initial NAS device. Very very handy.

I do NOT know, however, if this feature works with other manufacturers like Maxtor, ClubMac, or what have you. I suspect it might, expecially since wired/wireless routers have had the option to add USB 2.0 storage to a network for a little over a year now.

Western Digital advertises this device as a print server as well, but MAKE SURE you check the compatibility list on their website before taking the plunge. Multi-function printers (print, copy, scan, fax) might work, but only the print function will be supported. Many higher-end photo printers (such as our HP Photosmart 7550) are NOT supported. Our Samsung ML-1650 (a USB laser printer) isn't supported either.

You may be able to find a general multi-purpose driver to work with your printer, but don't expect to get technical support from WD if you do.

If you have an Ethernet or workgroup printer, obviously, you aren't going to use the print server function, either.

If you do have a printer that works, set-up is extremely easy, especially on Mac OS X. The Printer Setup utility immediately recognizes the WD NetCenter as a print server.

Don't expect miracles from this product. Its not very quick. Copying large amounts of files to it will bog down your network, especially if doing it wirelessly (802.11B, G or N). If the drive is being written to AND read from at the same time, you'll really tax the NAS...not unlike any P-ATA or S-ATA internal drive.

I'm disappointed that WD only offers this product with 10/100bT instead of 10/100/1000, since our house is wired for gigabit. Still, at this price, I'm not THAT disappointed. The drive is super quiet, easy to use, doesn't require fans to keep cool and, as far as I know, does NOT utilize proprietary protocols to connect to Macs and PCs.

Oh...and it does play nice with Macs and PCs both. Server shares, passwords and general setup are all done through a web browser, much setting up a broadband routers. You don't access the drive by typing in an IP address, but rather through WD's software, which brings up the browser for you. You can access the device through IE, Firefox, Mozilla or Safari. I've tried them all without issue.

Accessing the drive CAN be a bit wonky. If you have just powered up the device or your Mac/PC, you'll have to give it a minute or so before you start mounting or accessing shared folders. This frustrated me at first until I realized that the WD had to announce its presence to the rest of the network.

I docked it a star for not having 1000bT and its limited print server functionality. I'm not saying you'll find better functionality elsewhere, but 5 stars to me means "phenomenal product". Overall, this product is "just excellent".

We use this as a server on our home network. One reviewer said that a 50GB copy would take 3 to 4 hours... No way!!! Maybe his network has bandwidth issues, dunno, but I do large file transfers with ours all the time, including across our wireless and I see on the order of 1 to 10 GB per minute, depending on the traffic our router is experiencing.

Setup is trivial and the drive has been very reliable over the last year. We use it constantly and I think it is a decent value. Within a year, these devices will probably be under $200. I look forward to picking up a 1TB model.

Despite the "Tech Specs" of Amazon, the WD NetCenter does not support RAID 1 (mirroring) configuration. According to a Western Digital representative in their forums, "RAID functionality was tested with this device but was not implemented on the final product due to lack of interest from our beta testers. This feature may be implemented on future enterprise based external products, but will not be implemented on the NetCenter hard drive."

I needed inexpensive home network storage that does both CIFS for my Windows computers and NFS for my Unix computers.

I bought the Western Digital Net Center & have found it to be a good device. It is simple to use & performs reasonably well.

The initial setup was painless & well documented. I left the default volume as is, deleted the default share and created a couple new shares. The NFS setup however, is undocumented. WD's support forums are only partially helpful.

To mount the Net Center using NFS the syntax is:

IPaddress:/shares/Main/Share

Where IPaddress and Share are specific to your device/setup.

The performance is pretty steady at 500 or so read/write operations per second, and about 5 MBytes/second sequential I/O. Random I/O performance falls off to about 2 MBytes/second. At these speeds, the 100Mbps ethernet interface is not a performance limitation. The Net Center is capable of storing files greater than 2GB. (I moved several 7GB files to the Net Center and byte-compared them to copies stored elsewhere.)

There are a few features that would be nice: An FTP interface, the ability to browse files via HTTP, redundancy, and better performance.

Otherwise it is a good [...].

There are a whole host of NAS type devices out there. This one isn't the best, but it is one of the best at its price point. Costing not much more than a standard external hard drive it offers a whole lot of extra functionality. Now everyone in my house can archive to the same drive and share one printer without messing around with the USB cable.
Pros:
Its solid, well built, and has operated without a hitch.
Set up for file storage is very easy.
Cons:
Attached printers loose a little functionality (monitoring ink levels and such). Nothing major though.
The software to connect to the drive adds another icon to your task bar. It is pretty easy on resources but it would be nice to just be able to connect.

My network is pretty simple -- two laptops that use a wireless router (Netgear Rangemax 240), a VOIP setup from Vonage, two network printers attached to print servers and a switch connecting them to my router.

Although I have two local USB hard drives available, space constraints keep me from attaching them to make regular backups or to have a meaningful accessible storage. Also, they are not on the network, so each laptop has its own separate USB hard drive.

The Western Digital drive set up with little fuss -- the only problem I encountered took me a while to figure out and it was resolved by turning off my Norton firewall so the network could recognize and assign a drive letter to the new drive. Then I just turned on the firewall again.

I was concerned about reviews of this and other network drives that lament slow data transfer, but went ahead anyway. One of my intentions for the drive was to backup an extensive photo gallery from my travels. They are on CD's and I had some concerns about the longevity of the CD's. Once the WD drive was installed, I set about copying all of the files off the CD's onto the hard drive. I completed transfers from about 10 CD's in something like 30 minutes, allowing for the time it took to insert CD's, locate the files, select them and copy them and sometimes wander off to do something else. This seemed as fast as any transfers I have done before, and it was all done wirelessly. Also was able to backup data from several programs without a hitch.

Although it is a very early stage after installation, I am very pleased with the product and its performance. It more than meets my needs.

2/7/2007 To update. I have now used this network drive for more than a year. It is used primarily for backups and duplicate files, including MP3 files and phot files. It still works great and I am not at all disappointed with the product's performance.

2/4/2008 Update. I have added two desktop computers to the network and they access the network drive without a hitch.

It says it supports Mac all over the package. However it doesn't support, and cannot be made to support Mac files that allow a wider use of characters for naming files. For instance, when I drag a folder over this icon to copy it starts copying until it comes to a file that has been named "ilegally" or uses a prohibited character. It says that it cannot copy this file and gives you the prompt "OK"?. "OK" is your only choice to click on. By clicking on "OK" the job terminates and you have a partially copied folder. How is that for compatibility? How is that for delivering backup assurance? I feel swindled. The product has a geeky feel to it also with lots of acronyms an geek speak. Mine will probably become landfill and be written off as an expensive education about doing more research than simply trusting the copy on the box. It's Mac compatible as long as you adopt PC conventions in how you operate your Mac. Run Mac owners... Run

Got it very recently. Hooked up like a dream and then hooked up the external USB drive I was using as an attachment to a computer and added my printer. Configuring the printer took me a couple tries on the first machine to make sure I set up the drivers correctly. The only issue I had was that my printer was not listed as compatible but the list was 1.5 years old. It works just fine and has been working great from two laptops and a desktop machine over a wireless network. A definite requirement for the network centered house and those who want easy backup access

We connected WD NetCenter 250 GB to the network which was a 108 Mbp super g wireless network.

The setup process was easy and NetCenter was running right away without any problem.

It is convenient to have a common hard drive for every computer.

To save files or retrieve files to and from NetCenter is slow. It is slow to the degree that it is detrimental to the business operation.

The NetCente hard drive can not be defragmented. Right now we store about 6 GB of information. We think if more data are stored in the NetCenter the speed is going to be even slower.

This NetCenter is good for playing with as a high tech toy. We do not see any value or application for business use.

My HD died before 5 years, it cost a fortune to recover NAS data. Bware and don't rely on it for exclusive backup. Reecovering data from a NAS costs significantly more than a USB HDD.