Product Description

Western Digital presents the WD My Book World II 2TB Network Hard Drive Storage Device - WDG2NC20000N, a superior STORAGE product. Designed for home users, creative professionals, workgroups, and anyone looking for shared storage, WD's My Book World Edition II offers a surprisingly simple and secure way to access and share your data, presentations, and photos at home, in the office and anywhere in the world, even when your local computer is turned off. The dualdrive network storage system combines 2.0 TB of storage, versatile RAID capability, backup software, user-serviceability, and remote access software to make it the most versatile and powerful remote access storage system in its class

Product Details

• Size: 2 TB
• Brand: Western Digital
• Model: WDH2NC20000N
• Dimensions: 6.90" h x 4.10" w x 6.60" l, 5.90 pounds
• Hard Disk: 1000GB

Features

• Offers 2 TB storage capacity in an elegant, small footprint design
• Easy access allows you to open the case and replace a drive
• UPnP enabled, makes network configuration easy and convenient
• 2TB = 2000GB Hard Drive Capacity
• Configurable to RAID 1 (Mirrored)

From the Manufacturer

Customer Reviews

Works as described. A good value and a useful tool.
I purchased this to have safe backups of all of my photos and music. Having lost a hard drive (not backed up) last year and my external drive being at capacity, and a bit finicky lately I was concerned about the safety of my data. I purchased this as an insurance policy against losing the treasured images of my family, friends and travel I have accumulated over the years.

I researched options and found this unit to be the best value to meet my needs. My needs (and wants) included:

Double back up of data (RAID)
Enough space to back up current drives (600GB)
Network-able so I can share to laptop

Out of the box this feels like a quality piece. At about 6 pounds it feels solid in your hands. Case is simple and attractive but would have preferred a black case over white. It comes with a wall-wart power supply and an ethernet cable. There is USB port but no cable is provided. One simple vertical white light is the only physical user interface. Aside from the color a very handsome package. My only issue is that the light NEVER goes out completely and is relatively bright. Consider that when deciding where to position it. Id prefer that the light have a sleep mode that would shut it off after a period of inactivity.

Set up is as simple as plugging it in and patching the network cable to your router. The included software does the rest. It finds the drives and maps them to your machine. The software must be loaded onto any machine on your network that you want to have access to the drive or to backup. A simple and pain free process.

Moving data to the drive is time consuming. Transfer speeds are slower than both my external and internal drives (not unexpected). Not a deal killer, just be aware that the initial data transfer will take a while. Once loaded the read/transfer speed is fast enough to stream music and movies to my laptop without issue. You'll notice that write speed was not one of my requirements as this is a back up & RAID drive. The drive has no fans so it is very quiet. Even when read/writing and sitting right on top of my desk I rarely notice it. I am a bit concerned about the long term viability considering it doesn't have fans and the venting on the top, bottom and back panels will let in a lot of dust.

I have not as yet set up a MioNet account (free with purchase, otherwise $79/Yr.) so I can't comment on its usefulness or interface.

In summary this unit has met my expectations for what I needed. No unpleasant surprises but no exceeded expectations. From a pricing standpoint it's a good value. Today the drives inside retail for $99 each. So you are paying $149 for a case, power supply, software, ability to network and a cable. A good deal in my book.

I don't hesitate to recommend the product and deduct a star (remember thats 20%) for the Cons noted below. I sleep better now knowing my pictures and media have a better chance of surviving through my lifetime.

Pros:
Peace of mind knowing pics are safe
Easy to set-up and network
Easy to use software
Quality construction
Everything included
Free MioNet account

Cons:
Slow write speed
Continual dismounts
Always-on status light

It's OK, but WD fails on the truth
Let me start off by saying, I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit and only know of how the device works on my setup. The NAS itself is quite nice. It's quiet, energy efficient and very simple to install. You just plug in a network cable and power, and wait until the light stops moving. Then browse to the admin web page and presto you got 3.8TB (RAID0) or 1.8TB(RAID1) to fill up.

Windows 7 instantly saw this thing as a network resource and I was able to browse to it. I didn't know what IP it had taken from my DHCP server, but the index.html file that I saw on the drive redirected me to it without a problem. Overall a nice little NAS that serves up music, movies and stores backups for my whole household.

I use the included Media Center and my wife uses XBMC on her WinXP laptop for movies, and we share a common library for music via iTunes. We can both be accessing different songs and/or movies without a single issue or skip...very nice!

Now the problem...IT IS SLOOOOOOOOW!

Forget what WD says about a 10/100/1000 connection because it just isn't going to happen. Everything I've read on every forum I can find says it's due to the weak processor that WD chose to use to run the Linux OS driving the whole thing. I get 11MB/s max, and that is using TerraCopy and not the even slower included windows explorer copy function. Moving my 130GB music collection (yes, all legal!) took hours. I manage that collection with iTunes and I've made the mistake of trying to update the ID3 tags on an entire genre of music...sloooooooow.

Summary: Don't expect the speed of an external USB or FireWire drive...it just isn't going to happen, but it will serve up music and movies at the same time without missing a beat. The only thing to clear your schedule for is making large data transfers or updates. I recommend getting your music and movies the way you want them locally, and then moving them to this NAS.

Great choice for a media server
I just installed this on my home network with the intention of centralizing my media storage. I was immediately impressed and surprised with just how easy it was to set up media sharing across my whole network. The included twonky media server works as expected (in fact better, I like the firmware version more than I like the PC), and comes with options for streaming internet Radio.

To give you an idea how it works, when you install the system it creates two mapped drives on your PC. One of these, the "public" folder, contains additional folders for songs, pictures, and video. You simply copy over your media to the appropriate folder. I was then able to immediately play them on my DNLA enabled devices (a Denon AVR 4308 CI, and a Sony KDL-W-5100 series TV). Set up honestly couldn't have been easier.

The out-of-the box RAID configuration was also a plus, and I've also had good luck with WD's backup program.

MIOnet itself seems to work as advertised. Yes, it can be slow, but I use direct mapping of drives vs. mio.