Western Digital My Book World Edition Review

by Jerry Jackson

The Western Digital My Book World Edition is a high performance network storage solution wrapped inside an attractive casing that allows you to share files with multiple computers over the internet or a home network. This compact file sharing solution lets you backup all your computers and works seamlessly with iTunes and Xbox 360 so that everyone in your family has access to music, photos, and videos that are important to you. Notebook users can also benefit by keeping important files on a networked drive at home, so a stolen laptop doesn't result in stolen data. Let's take a closer look.

Build and Design
The Western Digital My Book World Edition looks quite similar to the rest of the "My Book" family of external storage drives and is extremely compact for a network attached storage (NAS) enclosure that contains either 1TB or 2TB worth of desktop hard drives. Full specifications include:

• Height: 6.81 inches
• Length: 5.78 inches
• Width: 2.28 inches
• Weight: 2.41 pounds
• Connectivity: Ethernet (10/100/1000 Mb/s transfer rates), USB 2.0 expansion
• Package Contents:
  • Network hard drive
  • Ethernet cable
  • AC adapter
  • Software CD
  • Quick Install Guide
• MSRP: $229.99 for 1TB, $449.99 for 2TB

The enclosure exterior is made of all white plastics and features a white LED status indicator on the front. The enclosure is very sleek and stylish with a minimalistic design and a subtle Western Digital "WD" logo on the sides. The top, bottom and back of the enclosure feature a perforated surface designed to help air flow inside and keep the hard drive cool. The only thing to see on the bottom of the My Book World Edition is a small sticker containing the product information, such as the serial number, model number, and country of manufacture.

To get to the point, this is one of the best looking NAS solutions we've seen. It's simple, functional, and attractive ... unless you hate glossy white plastic and the pulsing white LED. We usually don't care how a NAS enclosure looks since most owners will connect the thing to a home network and then stick it behind a router or hide it in a closet. However, the My Book World Edition looks nice enough that you might be willing to leave it sitting out on your desk without feeling embarrassed when company comes over.

The only thing I don't love about the enclosure design (the same thing I dislike about the other "My Book" enclosures) is the security lock slot is "hidden" on the back among the vent holes. An IT manager (or a security-conscious family member) might find it frustrating when they try to connect a security cable to the enclosure and can't find the lock slot.

Setup and Features
We could say the My Book World Edition is remarkably simple to setup and use, but that honestly makes it sound more complicated than it is. The World Edition is about as close as you can get to a "plug-and-play" NAS. Simply connect the World Edition to your network router, insert the included software CD, click "Map Network Drive" and that's it! You can start using the World Edition in a matter of seconds. Yes, more complex activities, such as scheduling backups, configuring iTunes or adjusting security settings takes more time, but this is the simplest way to create network attached storage we have ever seen.

One nice feature on the World Edition that isn't found on all NAS enclosures is a USB port for storage expansion. This USB port can't connect directly to a computer, but it allows you to connect an external USB storage drive to the World Edition in case you need to add more storage to your network.

Performance
The My Book World Edition offers exceptional speed and power efficiency thanks to the use of WD hard drives with "GreenPower" technology. GreenPower drives combine a delicate balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed for both significant power savings and solid performance. The drive inside the World Edition consumes less power by automatically unloading the recording head during idle to reduce aerodynamic drag, and disengaging read/write channel electronics. The drive also calculates the optimum seek speed to lower power consumption, noise and vibration. The bottom line is significantly less power consumption than typical desktop drives without sacrificing performance.

The My Book World Edition is rated at a theoretical maximum of 1000Mb (megabits) transfer rate on a 1Gb network which equates to 125MB (megabytes) per second. Of course, the speed of your home network router and how much data is being transferred by other devices on your network will have a direct impact on the speed of the My Book World Edition.

Atto is one of the standard synthetic benchmarks we use to test the performance of a storage drive. Below you can see the average read and write times for the My Book World Edition compared to other NAS units and wired storage solutions.

Western Digital My Book World Edition	Iomega StorCenter ix2
WD My Book Mirror Edition USB External Drive	Seagate Internal SATA Desktop HDD

As you can see, the My Book World Edition is the fastest stand-alone NAS we have reviewed in our office ... making the My Book World Edition a great low-cost alternative to a home server if all you need is backup and file sharing. As mentioned previously, one minor disadvantage to using networked storage is that transfer speeds will decrease if you are actively downloading files from the Internet or if multiple computers on your network are accessing the network at the same time. Below are the Atto benchmark numbers taken from the My Book World Edition during moderate network activity:

Conclusion
The Western Digital My Book World Edition is a great addition to the My Book family of external storage devices and offers consumers an extremely easy-to-use network storage solution. The fact that average consumers now have a way to instantly backup their files without even thinking about it practically makes the My Book World Edition a "must have" accessory for the home or office. Being able to use this device as an iTunes server or for streaming video to a game console makes it great for home entertainment.

Although an eSATA drive would be faster for people who need extreme speed, wireless storage is far more advantageous for people with multiple computers.

Bottom line, the My Book World Edition is a fantastic stand-alone network drive that is easy to use and provides exceptional wireless transfer speeds. The Western Digital GreenPower drives used inside means the World Edition consumes significantly less power while delivering performance on par with power hungry network storage devices using 7200 RPM hard drives. Families or small offices with multiple laptops now have a simple way to make sure everyone has access to important files ... even if the hard drive inside your notebook or netbook is full.

Pros:

• Extremely fast: The fastest consumer NAS we've tested
• Simple setup and use makes this ideal for home and small office
• Quiet

Cons:

• White plastics look cool but might stand out in some homes or offices
• Fast, but not as fast as a wired eSATA enclosure or internal SATA drive
• Security lock slot "hidden" on back of the enclosure

Pricing and Availability
The Western Digital My Book World Edition ($229.99 for 1TB, $449.99 for 2TB) is available for purchase on the Western Digital website or at many retail and online stores.

 

Thanks for the detailed review, Jerry.

 

Great review

I like the Western Digital brand, very reliable.

Cin

 

I hate them! I bought a 1tb wester digital drive in january and pretty much exactly one month it got currupt and again a month after that. Not to mention the power ac cable that came with it didnt work.

Its silent, more stylish and faster compared to my old 500gb maxell drive but i never had curruption problems with it. I've now split the drive into partitions so hopefully when it currupts again only one will go but its useless if you really need to backup anything. I only use for temp video files but its a pain if they go again and i've got to spend hours recreating them.

Reading reviews on amazon for the drive i have and the my book shows a lot of people have problems with it. I'd stay clear :/

 

Hmmm. Sorry for your troubles..My WD 500GB My Passport Essential Portable HD, has worked just fine for me I would purchase again from WD!

Now, I haven't tried this one, but I will take this review, your comments, and others into consideration if ever considering purchasing. Alas, it always comes down to ones own choice!

Cin

 

Never used a NAS drive, but I'm curious to know how secure the web access feature is, and if it supports backup software.

I've been looking for a solution that offers free web-access to a big hard drive, but I would also like something that lets me back up data from a notebook when I am out in the field. Any recommendations?

The price of the 2TB version seems steep (bare 1TB drives are going for like $100), but considering the nice enclosure, functionality and feature set, I think it's a smart investment that will pay dividends later on.

 

How does this compare in your opinion to a full on serverish product like the HP MediaSmart?

 

This looks really sweet I might have to check it out anyone else have any other recommendations like this? Thank you

 

In my experience, a good server over a fast network connection can reach transfer speeds of 50MB+ (write) and 90MB+ (read).

The average cheap consumer NAS usually tops out around the 10MB-20MB range while the My Book World Edition came in at a respectable 20MB-30MB ... similar to a standard USB external drive.

The two big things that impact network storage speeds are network speed and processor power (the processor speed of the NAS or server running the storage). Since most consumers are running home network routers that are only rated at 100Mb speeds you can use a cheap NAS and never exceed the wireless speed of your home network. If you're using a good 1000Mb/gigabit router and a high speed internet connection then you will see the benefit of a faster NAS or home server.

 

That actually looks quite nice and tidy. The 1TB or 2TB storage is great too, should come in handy in homes with many computers.

 

WOW they have certainly improved over their previous attempts at NAS storage. The world Book Series I have is 2TB, and only manages to squeeze out 2.5 mb/s which is about norm from what I have seen others report online, so this is a huge leap forward!

 

Hi - No offence but - I think you have the decimal point in the wrong place.

This device is inherently unstable and unusable if you are expecting the quoted speed.

THe quickest transfer speed you can get out of this device about 600k/second even if you are hard wired to the router.

My router is very fast.

I am transferring 13GB to it now and it's going to take about 8.5 hours !

Sorry but this device should be capable of transferring very fast - but it is let down by the slow ethernet port.

Steve

Also - unless you are comfortable in UNIX do not buy this if you have a MAC or use OS X.

MyBook World Edition does not work well with OS X due to it's purposely crippled linux operating system.

Some useful things may be done with it - but you need to hack it and install a swapfile to make sure it does not run out of memory. EG you can install almost any UNIX software and webservers PHP torrent downloaders UPNP servers ( for watching movies on the XBOX 360 and SONY PS3 - it's just about fast enough for them to stream video off it )

It will from time to time become Read Only and then require 2 reboots to get it functioning properly again.

It's a great idea - poorly executed.

 

It's possible I am wrong if they released a new updated model in the last year.

 

I'm thinking about getting one of these, but does a NAS need to be left powered on all the time? We turn the router off at night (its an old Speedtouch and it does get hot) and I'd want to turn the My Book off as well. Does it just boot like any other piece of kit, or would it cause problems...