Hardware review: WD My Book World Edition II
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After looking around for a storage solution to house my growing collection of photographs, I found the Western Digital My Book World Edition II. I’ve been storing my photos on single external hard drives so far, but data loss has always been a concern with that approach. All it takes is a hard drive failure, and I’m going to lose a good portion of my hard work. Naturally, I’ve been looking into various RAID or other failsafe solutions, since they’ve gotten to be fairly affordable.
Great design
I was immediately drawn to the new WD My Book line because of their beautiful design, 1 TB capacity, and the ability to configure the device in RAID 1 format, which would mean my data would be mirrored across the two hard drives inside it. (This would also halve the amount of space available, but that was okay with me — I wanted data redundancy.)
For those of you not familiar with WD’s external drives, they have done a beautiful job with their enclosure design, and I raved about their Passport line several months ago. It turns out I now own one of them, a sleek black 160 GB 2.5″ drive just like the one pictured in that post. It’s perfect for data portability, and for a while, I even stored some of my photos on it. But it is just a single drive, and as I said, I’m worried about data loss.
Choosing the product
Back to the My Book line. There were two models I really liked: the My Book Pro and the My Book World. Because I have a mixed OS environment (both PC and Mac), I thought a NAS solution like the My Book World would work best for me, even though its specs said it would only work for Windows. I had a pretty good hunch that I would also be able to access it with my iMac. It runs on Java, it has Samba shares, and those are readily accessible from any Mac. But, this isn’t advertised, and that’s a pity.
By the way, if you’re thinking about getting the My Book Pro drive, make sure to read my review of that model. The takeaway message is to stay away from it, and I explained why in that article.
How it works
The drive itself is beautiful and fairly quiet, except when it boots up. WD has also made firmware upgrades available that make the drives even quieter, so that’s a good thing. I can tell you this right away. If you only plan to use the drive in a Windows environment, it’ll work great. Feel free to buy it, you’ll be happy. But, if you plan to use it in a mixed OS environment, and are looking to access it in more flexible ways, such as with custom drive mappings, and not through the software provided with the drive, you might be very frustrated.
Let me explain. The drive comes with a custom version of something called Mionet. I’ve never heard of it, but it’s software that installs on your machine and makes your files and computer remotely accessible from anywhere. When you run the installer, it’ll prompt you to create an account on the Mionet website, and it’ll register the WD drive, along with your computer, as devices that you can then access remotely. (There’s a monthly fee involved if you want to control your own PC remotely with the software, but you don’t need to pay it to use the WD drive fully.)
Once you install the software, you start up Mionet, and the WD My Book World drive gets mapped automatically to your machine. You also have the option to manage the drive through a browser interface. That’s actually where you configure its volumes (1 TB single volume, or RAID 1, still single volume, but mirrored data and only 500 GB) and other options. Basically, you have to remember that the only proper way to access the drive, whether you’re at home or you’re away, is to start up Mionet and get it mapped to your “My Computer”. If you do that, you’re good to go.
Potential problems
The problem with this approach (and this tends to be a problem only for geeks like me) is that the drive is readily accessible over the network without Mionet. I can simply browse my workgroup and find it, then log in with separate accounts I can set up by using the WD drive manager, which is accessible through my browser. So here’s where the frustrating part comes in. I can browse to my drive over the network, without Mionet, from any PC or Mac in my home, administer its options, add users and shares, etc. Then I can use Tools >> Map Drive on my PC or Command + K on my Mac to connect to the share name, and log in using those user accounts I’ve just set up. But, I can only read from those shares. I can’t write to them. The drive operating system assigns weird UNIX privileges to those shares, and they don’t correspond to the accounts I’ve just set up. It makes no sense to me and you’ll only fully know what I mean if you do this yourself. Suffice it to say that it’s really frustrating, and it’s not what I expected.
It would have been alright if Mionet made a version of their software for the Mac, but they don’t, and they don’t seem to have any plans to make any. It would have still been alright if the drive hadn’t been accessible through any Mac whatsoever. But the fact that they are accessible, and that I can log onto the drive with usernames and passwords that I can set up through the admin interface, yet I can only gain read-only access to those shares even though I’m supposed to have full access really gets me. Sometimes it’s a real pain to be a geek…
So, my verdict is that I really like the design and the RAID 1 capability, but I do not like the implementation. I ended up returning this and getting the My Book Pro Edition, which I love, and will review very soon. But remember, if you don’t have a mixed OS environment, and have no problems with starting up Mionet when you want the drive to appear in “My Computer”, My Book World will work great for you, and the remote access capability is a really nice feature.
Updates
Updated 7/19/07: I purchased and reviewed the My Book Pro as well. You can read my review right here.
Updated 8/3/07: Multiple commenters have pointed out (see this, this, this, this, this and this) that you can use the drive just fine with both Macs and PCs, over the network, if you skip the install of the Mionet software altogether. It looks like the clincher is the Mionet install itself. Just forgo it, and you’ll be able to map the drive to both PCs and Macs, and read/write as much as you want. I didn’t realize that I had to uninstall Mionet entirely in order for the read/write to work properly.
But keep in mind, if you don’t use the Mionet software, you won’t be able to access the drive remotely. Well, you might be able to arrange some access, but you’ll need to custom-configure your firewall settings to allow traffic on certain ports, and you’ll need a static external IP or dynamic DNS so you can get at your firewall from the outside. And then you’ll need to worry about data encryption as well, unless you don’t care that your data will travel unencrypted over open networks. If you’re a hardcore geek, feel free to try this last bit out, but if you aren’t, beware, it’s a weekend project, and I can’t help you.
Updated 8/9/07: I’ve had several people comment on how they bought the drive based on this post and the comments made on it by others, believing they could get it working over the network with their Mac. The kicker is that they thought they could connect it directly to their machine and get it working that way. 
I don’t know how they got that idea, but let me set the record straight. This is a NETWORK drive. It needs a network in order to work. There’s a chance you might get it working by using a crossed ethernet cable or connecting it directly to your machine, but it probably has to be a crossed ethernet cable.
The best way to get it working is to use a hub or a switch, or best of all, your home router, which can assign IP addresses. The drive ships configured for DHCP. That means it has no IP address to start with, and it’s looking for a place to get them. If you don’t have such a place, you’re going to have a lot of headaches. Get such a place (router) or go buy a USB/Firewire drive. Most people who’ve commented already made it plainly clear that’s what they needed, but they still insisted on using this drive. I don’t know why they enjoy the stress of doing that. I didn’t. As I already said in my post, I returned it and got a WD My Book Pro Edition II.
Last but not least, please do me a big favor. Read through the existing comments before you write one. There are so many already, and there’s a very good chance someone’s already asked your question, and I or someone else has already answered it. Thanks!
Updated 12/11/07: I found out today that Western Digital is going to disallow the sharing of all media files through the Mionet software. In other words, if you’re going to use Mionet to share the files on your drive and make them accessible remotely, you will not be able to see or use any of your media files. I think this is a pretty stupid move on WD’s part, and it’s going to come back to bite them. Until they decide to do away with this boneheaded downgrade, keep it in mind if you’re looking to purchase a My Book World Edition. Do NOT use Mionet. Install the drive without it, and if you’ve got to make the files accessible remotely, find other ways to do it, like through a custom config of your firewall.
Updated 12/18/07: Christian, one of the commenters, has left two very useful comments that are worth mentioning here in the post. The first shows you how to access the drive remotely (when you’re away from home) without using the Mionet software. The second tells you why you don’t need to worry about defragging the drive, and how to troubleshoot its performance if you think it’s not as fast as it should be. Thanks Christian!
More information
- Western Digital 1 TB My Book World Edition II External Hard Drive listing at Amazon
- Western Digital 1 TB My Book Pro II External Hard Drive with Triple Interface listing at Amazon
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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I have the 500gb version and, so far, really like it. It’s hard to believe you can buy 500gb of storage for $169, but that’s what it costs at Costco. I thought about the 1tb version, but then thought about what my wife would say…Anyway, I use Carbonite online backup and was concerned I would not be able to back up the WD. However, I mounted the drive to a folder on my c drive and it backs up beautifully.
Now I’ve got all my music and pictures on the WD and all my other data on my laptop.
Comment — June 25, 2007 @ 9:43 pm
hey Raoul,
. Have you talked with their tech support about your concerns? Have they mentioned any remedies?
nice post. Yeah, I’ve been looking into this drive but heard it’s noisy and your findings spare me some much (un)needed grief
The blogging is going quite nice I see. Good job!!!
Comment — June 27, 2007 @ 10:52 am
Cosmin, thanks. The thing is, the drive isn’t as noisy as you might think, and it does work as advertised, albeit not as an IT guy would like it to work, given that it is a NAS device. I did talk to WD support about the other drive, the My Book Pro, and they were very nice. WD Support is located right here in the US, Americans answer the phone, they answer it right away, they’re knowledgeable, and nice. It was a very pleasant surprise and an important reason why I stuck with WD when I considered other options.
Comment — June 27, 2007 @ 10:58 am
I have this drive for a week, but I cant find any way to defragment it or run any WD diagnostic tool.Seems theres no any way to do that…that scares me.
Comment — July 2, 2007 @ 4:27 am
WDIIuser, the file system on the drive is a flavor of Linux, and those file systems cannot be defragmented. I wouldn’t worry about it though. Drives get fragmented only when you do a lot of writes and deletes. If you use it to store files or to do backups to it, you’ll be fine.
Comment — July 2, 2007 @ 8:05 am
Thanx for reply, but what if I’ll do a lot writes and deletes will it suffer from fragmentation?
and another thing is there some workarounds to improve its transfer speeds?I didn’t tried to plug it with crossover cable directly to PC, but maybe someone did and can tell about performance experience? Anyway it’s a very big disadvantage that USB port is only for extension purposes.
Comment — July 2, 2007 @ 8:14 am
Did you mean that I can’t write files remotely into WD world drive through my MAC computer?
Thanks.
Comment — July 14, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
Hi Wei. Yes, that’s what it boils down to. There’s no Mionet software for the Mac, and if you map directly to the drive (which you can do on a local network), you will only be able to read, not write.
Comment — July 14, 2007 @ 8:36 pm
Thanks Raoul!
It’s really a pity! Hope they can resolve this problem soon.
Comment — July 14, 2007 @ 10:47 pm
Hey Raoul,
Just picked up the MyBook World Edition from costco, and I have to admit I really like it. Hate the MioNet interface, however…I just mapped it to a network drive, and I’m not having any read-only problems…I am using Windows however. I have ordered a MacBook, and it should be getting here any day (hopefully today). I was a little unclear through your review…so if I map the MyBook to a drive through my Mac, I won’t be able to write to it? Or were you experiencing that problem with Mac and Windows? And were you only having that problem when you set up accounts?
Thanks!
Comment — July 19, 2007 @ 4:54 pm
Hi Iean, the write privileges issue occurs on both Windows and Mac, but only when you map to the drive manually, over your home network. If you map to the drive using Mionet, things work just fine. The problem is that there’s no Mionet software for the Mac, so the only way to access the drive from a Mac is to map to it manually. Unfortunately, that brings you back to square one, because you won’t be able to write to it. Hope this helps clarify things. Basically, you’re okay if you use the Mionet software on Windows. Otherwise, things don’t work as expected.
Comment — July 19, 2007 @ 5:53 pm
[...] Less than a month ago, I reviewed the WD My Book World Edition II, a NAS device from Western Digital, and I promised that I’d also review the My Book Pro Edition II, which I also bought. Here are my thoughts. [...]
Pingback — July 19, 2007 @ 6:45 pm
Hi Raoul!
I just received my mybook world edition and opened a mionet account using my pc. But when I used my mac, I don’t know how to find mybook. Can you please tell me how to map to it manually?
Thank you very much.
Comment — July 22, 2007 @ 4:54 pm
I tried to use the website https://mionet.senvid.net/support/mioNetWeb/mioNetWebLogin.jsp?p1=8330841&p3=8330870, but following errors occured:
MioNet must be given permission in order to access the internet.
To use MioNet, you must close all web browser windows and try again.
when you try again, please select ‘Yes’ in the window that is displayed.
Actually, I can access it using mac’s network.
thanks.
Comment — July 22, 2007 @ 4:59 pm
Wei, I talked about this in my post, but here it is again:
- Command (Apple) + K, then browse for the server
- Go >> Connect to Server >> Browse, wait for the Mac to find it, then connect.
As I said repeatedly, both in the post and in my comments, you will NOT be able to write to the drive if you connect this way, only read from it.
Comment — July 22, 2007 @ 6:11 pm
Thank you Raoul!
Actually, this is just what I did with my mybook. Don’t know why but did’t like what you have said, I was able to write to the drive. I think you can’t do like this only when your computer and mybook are in the same local network.
What I meant was when I use my mac like in my home how could I connet to the mybook which is in the office?
Thanks.
Comment — July 22, 2007 @ 10:20 pm
No, you won’t, as I also stated in my review. You cannot use a Mac to check a remote MyBook World, because you’d need Mionet to do it, and there is no Mionet for the Mac.
Comment — July 22, 2007 @ 11:32 pm
[...] As I checked my traffic stats over the past few days, I noticed a steady stream of traffic to my reviews of the WD My Book World and Pro Edition II hard drives. I was pleasantly surprised, but couldn’t figure out why. Other than publishing the reviews on my blog, I hadn’t done any sort of promotion. No one had linked to them so far (from what I could tell), yet the traffic was there. It wasn’t an outrageous amount of traffic, but nice, steady and regular. That sort of traffic usually only comes from one source: search engines. [...]
Pingback — July 26, 2007 @ 8:33 pm
I’m able to MAP a READ/WRITE drive to my MAC.
1. First I created a Shared Folder on the drive, with read/write privileges. (I also created another username, the same as my Mac username, but I don’t think that was necessary. The username has Read/Write access to the Shared Folder.)
2. On the Mac, go to Network -> [My Book World's WORKGROUP] -> [My Book World's NAME]
3. Click Connect
4. Log in with the username/password that has read/write access to the Shared Folder on the MyBookWorld drive.
5. Select that Shared Folder in the menu.
6. You might get an error, but if you look on your desktop, you’ll see that it connected the Shared Folder as a new Network Drive!
=E=
Comment — July 29, 2007 @ 1:33 am
That’s the same thing I did, but the mapped drive wasn’t read/write. It was simply read. Have you tried writing to it, particularly after rebooting the My Book drive? It didn’t work for me, but if it works for you, I’ll be pleased.
Comment — July 29, 2007 @ 9:55 am
i wish i had bought the one without the crappy mionet software!!!
those ones with just an simple usb connection that gets reconized by my computer…..
plz someone help me, i cant seem to access it through my network.
aaaaargggh. i have tried run/ipconfig/all,trying to find its ip adress etc.
i just have one ethernet port so i kind of need to connect it directly to my pc.
anyone???
thanx a million
thom
Comment — July 30, 2007 @ 10:41 am
Thom, if you don’t want to run the Mionet software (which I recommend that you do, because that’s how the drive was meant to work), you may connect it directly to your computer with a crossed Ethernet cable. It works in the same fashion as a hub/switch. You’ll need to go to your local computer store and buy one, but be sure to ask for it by name, and make sure you’re not getting a straight Ethernet cable.
Really though, with the prices of switches falling so much these days, I recommend you get a little 4-port switch, plug the drive and your computer into it using regular (straight) Ethernet cables, and be good to go. If you say you have only one port on your computer, that’s fine too. Connect the switch to the router that gives you your Internet connection, and the switch will share it with both the My Book World drive and your computer.
Comment — July 30, 2007 @ 10:50 am
thanx, i kind of figured out to get me one of those 4 port switches.
it’s just that i am often on the road with my lap-top and i would like to find out to have it directly connected to my laptop (for mac as well) without using this mionet thing.
trouble is i was not aware of this mio-network possibility at the time of purchasing the product. nor did i really know what an “usb driver was” but i have been reading these blogs for 3 days in a row now, just to find out how to locate this bastard.
it is brand new and we just use it for music…..
a friend of mine put around 800 gigs of sorted music on it and i can’t wait to listen to it!!!!!
except for you no one seems to return these simple q’s i got.
sorry, dunno anything about compus,:(
i go to network locations……..nothing, i get some kind of lan 3 connection popping up at the bottom of my screen.
do i have to create a new network location????
thanx anyway
thom “the not so computer geek”
Comment — July 30, 2007 @ 11:23 am
Thom, it really looks as if the My Book Pro Edition (which is a USB/Firewire drive) would have been a better choice for your needs. As it is, since you’d rather not carry a switch with you, buy a crossed Ethernet cable, connect the drive to your laptop, install the Mionet software, and it should find the drive and connect it to your machine.
The USB port on the World Edition drive is not intended to connect it to a computer, but rather only to allow you to connect another external drive to it and share the space from both drives through the My Book.
If you’re still having problems, I suggest calling WD’s Support. They’re great, and you do get 30 days of free tech support with the drive. They start with your first call. I say use them, it’ll do you a lot of good.
Comment — July 30, 2007 @ 11:49 am
i found the following: you actually CAN locate this drive on both windows laptops and mac books without using this not so ready WD Anywhere Access crap!!!!
i looked up the WD help site ( FAQ: answer 1531)
the explain the whole thing (step by step for people like me)
My Computer –> type in the adress bar and use the default name \\MyBookWorld
(also works with windows explorer)
with your i-Book –> http://*ip address*
first set up a static IP though.
nice1
anyway Raoul, cheers for your help.
and yes, you were right:
i would have been way better off with the Pro Edition
Comment — July 31, 2007 @ 5:25 am
Thanks Thom, glad it’s working for you now.
Comment — July 31, 2007 @ 8:51 am
I’ve also been using this drive in a mixed environment of Windows and Macs, since I picked on up in Feb/March time frame. I’ve had no problems at all using my MacBook Pro to write,delete, copy or read file from My World Book Pro.
I installed the software, but didn’t see the point, so I deleted it. My Windows box has the drive mapped as a network drive. On my Macbook Pro I added the a link in the startup items of my user to automatically mount the drive.
I have had a few times where the both machines and drive get confused, so the stop working together. In these case, I just reconnect to the drive. If that fails to fix the problem, I reboot the drive.
Comment — August 1, 2007 @ 12:29 am
Jeff, your comment’s a bit confusing. You mention the “My World Book Pro”, but that’s not a real drive name. You’ve got either the My Book World Edition or the My Book Pro Edition. Which one are you using? Please clarify it for the rest of the readers. Thanks.
Comment — August 1, 2007 @ 12:47 am
I installed a 500GB MyBook World (ethernet) last night wanting a NAS device on my home network. Based on this thread I ignored the Mionet software and just used the browser to connect to the drive and configured CIFS shares. Accessed these from both PC and MAC without any problems and for both with read/write access. Seems the key is not to try and mix and match manual config with WDAnywhere/Mionet.
Comment — August 3, 2007 @ 3:23 am
Hi, I’ve got a My Book World Edition II drive and it happily reads and writes when hooked up to my MacBook Pro. I haven’t had to change anything, just using the default shared folder that comes with the drive.
My main gripe with this drive is the speed, it’s nowhere close to being gigabit speeds, I’m only really seeing speeds comparable to 10Mb ethernet connection! I’ve tried it connected to a windows machine and it wasn’t really any better so I don’t think it’s a Mac issue.
I’ve actually talked to WD support a fair bit about it, I was told the drive actually uses a file system called ‘ReiserFS’ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReiserFS - so it should be a very good system. But the write speeds make it useless for me in a work situation. I’ve simply taken it home to use as a NAS drive for home use and I’ve got a My Book Pro Edition on it’s way for use at work.
The WD support seemed to be aware of the issues with the drive, I’m hoping they bring out a firmware update for it that improves it’s performance.
Comment — August 3, 2007 @ 3:32 am
Stu, Rick, what can I say but that I’m happy it works on Mac as well!
I’m glad you and others who have pointed this out figured out how to get it working that way. I’ll update the post to reflect this. Thanks for letting me know!
Comment — August 3, 2007 @ 7:23 am
Hi
Just bought a WD 500Gb drive.
Can someone advise if there is a way to directly connect this drive to my computer if I am not on a network? I desperately need non network access!!!
thanks in advance
Comment — August 5, 2007 @ 6:15 am
I have had the 500gb My Book for about a year and love it and a Maxtor 500gb One Touch and love that also. Both of these drives are used to store CD’s and I thought that I’d purchase the 1tb My World Edition II and put all my CD’s on it. How disappointing to see the write speed on it. I mean come on, almost 2 hours to transfer 21 cd’s? I have it connected to my router and then I plugged my notebook into the router also. Sad, sad, sad speed. Very disappointed in this product and am thinking of taking it back and steering clear of WD.
Comment — August 5, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
Rob, if you needed to connect the drive directly to your computer, you would have been better off with the Pro Edition.
James, I think you’re in the same boat as Rob. You both have to remember this is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. It’s meant to be used over the network, and its transfer speeds will be slower than that of a USB or Firewire drive like the Pro Edition.
Comment — August 5, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
I understand that it’s an NAS and that’s how I plan to use it. I just wish that the write speed was faster. I want to be able to access it from anywhere and I also want to give access to it to other people, so it really is the best solution for me…just waaaaayyyyyyyy slow.
Comment — August 5, 2007 @ 8:06 pm
It depends on your network speed as well, James. If it’s a wired network (CAT5e) cable, 100 Mbps or 1000 Mbps, then the transfer speeds will be fast. But if it’s a wireless network, even though the spec speed is 54 Mbps, you’re lucky if you get 20-30 Mbps. It’s just the way wireless works. The drive may be plugged into your router at 100 Mbps, but the connection between your computers and the router is the bottleneck.
Comment — August 5, 2007 @ 9:10 pm
Actually both the drive and my notebook are wired at the moment and wireless is turned off. Before I did that, it was moving at a snails pace.
Comment — August 5, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
hokay-
just picked up one of the 1TB versions from costco.
These instructions are for local network connections only with a mixed use environment (mac/pc)
So Heres how you actually make it work with a mac. (i did have to use a pc for initial access)
Goto the WD website and download the full PDF for more info on setup, look to the end of the manual.
DO NOT USE / install the crappy WD / Mionet software.
I guess you’ll need this for remote access but I think you’ll lose you’re mac-ability.
on the PC-> in IE, type in MYBOOKWORLD and go
that will take you to the SHARED STORAGE MANAGER universal browser based setup.
type in default info if yours is still setup to default settings (admin, 123456)
from there do all the basic crap and make sure you setup the drive to a unused static IP instead of DHCP, you will have to understand basic IP configuration to do this. now that its setup for a static IP you can always type that number in the mac firefox browser and gain access to the SHARED STORAGE MANAGER SOFTWARE and you can do all the rest of the setup from there.
I suppose you could leave it on DHCP but you’d have to use the PC to check the number each time in case it changed to type the IP in the mac firefox browser.
Also make sure to change the workgroup to whatever workgroup name you are using with the macs / PCS, “workgroup” is of course the default.
than just follow the directions to setup users and shares.
You will need to have SMB enabled on the mac (directory access app for setup)
if you leave the drive at the default name of “mybookworld” than hit command K on yer mac and in the window type in smb://mybookworld and save your line before connecting, it will than give you the list of shares you’ve created and than log in with whatever user names and passwords you’ve created to access that share. (ive created a master to add material, and a read only for the rest of the building to share.)
Its not nearly as fast as a firewire link even with a straight gigabit connection but it does work!
this is after a few hours of reading these articles and cursing.
cant vouch for wireless performance.
echo the USB port is not for direct connecting, but to add additional drives (i think it has a limit of 5 volumes) havent tested this part yet.
still monkeying but I have success!!
Comment — August 6, 2007 @ 7:26 am
Thanks for the detailed instructions, Skot!
Comment — August 6, 2007 @ 8:23 am
Sorry people, but I’m really confused. I’ve just purchased the My Book World Edition 500 Gig ethernet drive based on, among other things, its compatibility with the Mac (based on what I’ve read here and elsewhere). Clearly I’m in over my head. I can’t get my PowerBook to find this drive no matter what I do. Can anyone give me a step-by-step (at this point I’m just trying to get it to work directly through the ethernet port. Later I intend to try it through the router I use to connect to the internet, except that I’m not home right now. And maybe it would also work through my AirPort Express?). PLEASE HELP…
Comment — August 8, 2007 @ 11:59 pm
Mugzy, I don’t know why you and others insist on buying this drive — which is a NETWORK drive — when you’d be better off with a USB/Firewire drive. It makes no sense to me. Why go through all that stress? I returned mine and got a WD Pro Edition. You and others with the same problem should do the same.
Anyway, if you’re still bent on using it, have a look at this FAQ article on the WD website, it explains things very well, albeit for a PC, but the steps on the Mac are the same. Also see Skot’s comment above for the Mac instructions. But please realize that you cannot connect the drive directly to your laptop/computer with a network cable and expect it to work. It’s a NETWORK drive, so it needs a network, as in a hub, router or switch of sorts. Well, you might just be able to connect it with a crossed ethernet cable, but those aren’t common. You have to go buy it and ask for it by name. I still say go get a USB or Firewire drive, unless you have a very specific need to share documents across a network with multiple computers.
Comment — August 9, 2007 @ 7:32 am
Thanks Raoul. But the reason I bought it over a ‘wired’ drive is simple: NO WIRES!! I do not want to lug around a USB/Firewire drive with me from room to room every time I move with my laptop. Voila! As for hooking this drive in directly to my computer, that’s only temporary to see if it works. and I thought I saw in the manual that this can easily be done as an alternative to using a router.
Comment — August 9, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
re: 41. The article on the WD website requires WD Anywhere Access: they don’t have it for the Mac. Skot says: “i did have to use a pc for initial access”: I don’t have a PC!
Comment — August 9, 2007 @ 6:37 pm
What a POS. I’m tired of spending days playing with my 1 TB World Edition II. The other day it connected just fine and I was able to start transfering files. I have made no changes, but for the past few days the drive is visible on the network for about 5 minutes and then it falls offline.
I can’t get WD to reply to any of my emails and have just threatened to smash up the drive and ship it back to WD.
Comment — August 12, 2007 @ 12:57 am
I’ve decided to take the drive apart, put the drives in usb enclosures, transfer my information back to the original drives, put the MBWEII back together, smash it into tiny, tiny pieces and then ship it to WD with a load of dog crap…
Think they’ll get the message?
Comment — August 12, 2007 @ 3:40 am
James, I don’t think it’ll work. Because the file system is different, you can’t read it if you take apart the drives. They can only be read through the enclosure. So if you must smash it to bits, transfer your files before opening it, then have your fun, or you might be in for a nasty surprise.
Comment — August 12, 2007 @ 9:43 am
Raoul-
Looks like I’ll have to lose all of my files then. The drive only stays online for a couple of minutes, then goes offline and of course, I still can’t Western Digital to respond to me, according to them, they’re experience a higher than normal volume of inquiries…guess I’m not the only one that’s having problems with this drive and by the looks of what I’ve seen online, most people that have this drive are unhappy with it.
Now that I’ve gotten that out, any idea how to keep the drive online?
Comment — August 12, 2007 @ 2:30 pm
Not really. Like I said, I returned my drive long ago and got the Pro Edition. I guess you’re stuck copying files during that 2 minute interval when the drive is active. Hope you haven’t got a lot of them!
Comment — August 12, 2007 @ 3:55 pm
The main problem with just about _all_ the NAS drives out there is that the CPU is too small. It just can’t give the speed one wish for, having a gigabit interface. Furthermore (don’t know if this is true for the MyBook World) the NAS’es tend to be slower when using RAID1 (mirror for redundancy). Most of the NAS boxes can’t even transfer at 100Mbps speed (10MB/s).
The reason for this is that the RAID is software based and makes the CPU work hard, and like in the MyBook’s case, it’s very likely running Linux, since ReiserFS is a Linux filesystem.
Basically, a faster cpu, and perhaps a little more memory would have made the NAS-device faaaaaaaaaaaast!
Unfortunately, this is not the case.
Comment — August 19, 2007 @ 5:57 am
Argh…mionet makes everything slow…
This is how I’m using and connecting my MyBook World, if anyone has suggestions for improving speed, please let me/us know!
-> Connects to my home-router with 1mbit up-traffic
-> Dynamic IP
-> Using mionet to map the drive
-> Storing and playing music files mostly
-> Using WinXP
Now, at work, I cannot access the drive fast enough to hear music properly, even though I’m on a fast network. Home is ok, on a slow network…
I might be able to get a static IP. I might be able to place it on a gigabit network. I would like to get rid of mionet. Hints to improve the performance and my life is greatly appreciated!
Comment — September 6, 2007 @ 12:14 pm
Re: World Edition
You stated that you cannot connect the beast directly to your comp without using a crossover cable. This is not the case. I just picked one up while travelling. When I returned to hotel room, I realized I did not have a X-over cable and of course, immediately kicked myself. I then figured, what the heck, maybe it has an autosense built in like several modern gadgets. Sure enough, it works like a charm directly connected. That said, to directly connect to it, you’ll need to be in the same subnet (which, of course means that you’ll have to choose something in the 169.254.X.X range for you PC).
Comment — September 20, 2007 @ 10:46 pm
Awesome news, Thomas! Did you hear that, everybody?
Comment — September 20, 2007 @ 10:57 pm
I can also confirm this. Being a IT literate, I panicked when I saw the whole Mionet thing and decided to try connecting using \\mybookworld\public as a windows mapped drive. Worked like a charm. However, I also agree that it is terribly slow when transferring large amounts of data and you’re pushed for time. I simply connected the drive directly to my PC’s network port with a NORMAL cable (not cross-over) and sure enough, the network map worked as usual. Was getting acceptable transfer speeds - nowhere near 1 GBit - but acceptable.
Streams media beautifully to my network DVD player in the living room
using Twonky on my PC. Looking into installing Firefly directly on the Linux OS on the drive: http://wiki.fireflymediaserver.org/MyBook_World_Edition_Install
I can also confirm that a Mac finds the drive with no problems.
It’s all down to NOT installing the Mionet stuff. Just plug and play. Unless you really need to access you files from the other side of the world, don’t install Mionet.
Hope this helps!
Comment — September 24, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
Really, really useful post. Thanks very much!
Comment — September 27, 2007 @ 12:37 am
Just a thought on getting the World II to work easily with a mac.
Plug the drive into your router and give it a few minutes. Access your router and find out the IP address given to the drive.
Then, open Mozilla Firefox (preferred) and type that IP address into the address bar. When prompted for User/Pass, type admin/123456
This logs you in to the Shared Storage Manager page and lets you create shares, users, set permissions, etcetera.
You can also change the device name, workgroup, and network settings. If you so choose, you can change from DHCP and manually config your IP, gateway, and DNS addresses
Once that is done, open a finder window, click on network, click on the appropriate workgroup, then select the device name of your My Book and click connect.
Box will pop up asking which share you want to connect to.
I have found that it makes a lot of sense to set up a “global” type of share and then nest just about everything else inside of it. That way, you don’t have to map/mount/open every individual share, but rather, you just a single one with the rest of the folders nested inside.
Also, you can go to Sys/prefs>accounts, select your name and then click on Login Items. Hit the + at the bottom left and a finder window pops up. Again select Network > workgroup>device name, click connect, enter user/pass that you set up and select the share you want to access.
This will mount the share each time you reboot.
BTW: should add that there are probably better / easier / faster ways to do this AND that I probably might have used some wrong terminology.
If so, please forgive me as I have recently switched over from the dark side and only bought my mac two weeks ago.
Comment — September 27, 2007 @ 2:34 am
I’ve just purchased the My Book World Edition 500 Gig ethernet drive based on, among other things. I can’t get my win xp comp to find this drive no matter what I do.My switch (that i ve connected the disk on it) works perfectly.
As i was reading somebody wrote: “on the PC-> in IE, type in MYBOOKWORLD and go.that will take you to the SHARED STORAGE MANAGER universal browser based setup….”
So, I cant do that. When i try this, a window appears and says that windows are unabe to find \\mybookworld. Check the spelling etc etc…
This means that my comp cant see the disk , so as the whole network.
i ve got also a small detail: when i connect the utp to my disk , the 2 small lights near the utp port (on the back side of the disk) dont light on.
I dont know what to do. Is there a chance that the utp port only, is not working? (but when i connect the AC i can hear the disk working). This means that My Book World Edition works fine but cant connect to anything,because of a hardware problem???
thnx a lot for your help
Comment — October 16, 2007 @ 8:53 am
Gollum,
It sounds like a bad MyBookWorld device to me. Even if the drives boot, maybe some other hardware part is bad. It sounds as if you have it connected correctly. Maybe try another one to see if it is just that one? I have 4 of the MyBookWorld drives (2, 1TB drives, and 2, 2TB drives), and I really love them. I don’t use Mionet, I just renamed them and set the workgroup. I use Cisco VPN to connect to my network, so I had no need for Mionet.
Comment — October 20, 2007 @ 7:14 pm
[...] Edition II Written on July 19, 2007 at 6:42 pm by Raoul Less than a month ago, I reviewed the WD My Book World Edition II, a NAS device from Western Digital, and I promised that I’d also review the My Book Pro [...]
Pingback — October 30, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
Hey Guys,
Yesterday I bought the wd world edition 2, 2 tb. I coped 567 gigabits from my pc thru my lan network to the wd worl edition and it took me about 30-40 hours and it sucks. I just bought a 10\100\1000 Ethernet straight cable not a cross over cable to conect my pc directly to the wd to save more time becaues I have many more data to copy. So if anyone knows how to connect the pc directly to the wd please state the steps. thank you all and sorry if there are any spelling mistakes.
Comment — December 3, 2007 @ 6:28 am
Dubai, have a look at the comments from Thomas and Nick for the answer to your question. I can’t help you beyond what they’ve said, so it might be a little touch and go before you get it working properly.
Comment — December 3, 2007 @ 7:05 pm
Ok Guys, I have the unit installed and working with my mac; let me help clear this all up for you. Please try to follow along with the technobabble if you are unclear about some of the long words, look them up on wikipedia or something.
1.) Dont install Anything
2.) You need a router with DHCP services enabled for things to work
3.) If you want to access it, just go to your finder, click go and then browse until you pick it up.
—- Now for the brave souls who wish to use it outside of the local network —
4.) You will require a rather expensive route OR a cheap old linksys with the dd-wrt firmware or something similar installed (wifi-box, sveasoft, etc should also work–have fun, i could write 10 pages about this alone)
5.) Get the MAC address of the network interface off of the sticker on the back of the unit and configure your DHCP services to statically assign an IP to the Western Digital Box. (e.g. 192.168.1.140) — now every time your unit is powered up and asks for an ip it will get the same one.
6.) Lookup the ports required for windows/samba networking (i forget what they are) and have them forwarded to the DHCP statically assigned IP. For the ultra lazy and security lax, just place it in the DMZ.
(please note, this is a really bad idea)
7.) setup pptp passthrough and a link.
8.) if your router does not support pptp with radius authentication, then you will either have to configure a linux box to do this for you or find another firmware. (the earlier linksys firmware for the WRT54G is preferred, but not required)
8.) setup remote administration so you can fix stuff when it breaks. (it probably will) (also set a STRONG PASSWORD for both remote administration and pptp.
9.) If you understand all the long words and acronyms, you are fine. If not, pick up book on MCSE/RHCE/Cisco network certifications, spend years dicking around and breaking other peoples’ stuff and learn the remaining steps.
Comment — December 4, 2007 @ 6:41 pm
Comment — December 4, 2007 @ 6:51 pm
I just bought a WD My Book World Edition I and I can’t believe how bad it sucks. I don’t see the point of making an external HD that cannot be hooked directly to a PC. It’s going to take me days to copy 1TB onto this thing and when it’s on there I don’t think I can trust that I will be able to access it without songs skipping due to read delays. At first I thought I just needed to buy a different USB cable but after reading here I guess that’s not the case.
WHAT A P.O.S.! DON’T BUY ONE! I’m sure the other editions are fine but the WORLD EDITION SUCKS!
Comment — December 15, 2007 @ 2:18 pm
First off, you don’t have to worry about defragging with the Linux file system. Don’t believe me? See why here…
If you really want to use the NTFS/inferior turd of a file system, directions are included below on how to make the thing work via USB directly with your machine.
Additionally, the unit should be faster anyway when you copy from USB to Ethernet than USB to USB. (That is because it is a serial bus and has a huge performance hit when data is transfered bi-directionally. If it did not, it would be known as a universal parallel bus or something similar) During normal use on 100BaseT, it should be a little slower, but barely noticeable. (assuming you don’t have a crap router/switch) If it is really slow and taking forever to transfer data, either something is wrong with your network/hardware configuration or the device is defective. Lastly, if you have Gigabit ethernet, it should be CONSIDERABLY faster than all of the above. If it is slow as heck, check to see if you are using a wireless connection. In that case you are a retard and should have known better (try using an ethernet cable).
In either case, if the device is not defective but you want USB, return it. If you dont want to pay the usual 15% restocking / a**-reaming fee OR you are past your return date then just do the following.
1.) Crack open the unit without breaking anything (I reiterate WITHOUT BREAKING ANYTHING).
2.) Take a look at the hard drive/drives (depends on the model) and determine if it/they are SATA, ATA or whatever and buy a correct external enclosure on newegg. You will find they are quite cheap.
3.) Mount the drive/drives in the new enclosure and format them for the windows / crap file system you are probably most accustomed to.
4.) DONT BLAME ME WHEN YOU SCREW SOMETHING UP. If any of the words in this posting are new to you, then you should probably find someone more proficient. An a** like me who will unnecessarily use technobabble and talk down to you like an idiot because you are an inferior being who has NOT spent the requisite billions of hours fixing BROKEN CRAP and instead were probably out chasing women and GETTING LAID. In that case, send me an e-mail, hook me up with one of your girls hot friends and I will be happy to fix your problem without any of the BS. (Also, beer would be appreciated.)
Comment — December 18, 2007 @ 8:16 pm
Thanks for another useful comment, Christian! This will really help those people looking to troubleshoot the performance of their World Edition II drives. Personally, I could have done without the inappropriate words (which I obscured slightly in editing), but I understand the need to punctuate things sometimes…
Comment — December 18, 2007 @ 8:27 pm
Lol, sorry, will try to keep things PG next time. Just on a rant after a long day of the aforementioned fixing of broken …. err… stuff.
Comment — December 18, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
No worries, Christian! I just updated the article to point people directly to your comments. Very useful stuff!
Comment — December 18, 2007 @ 8:44 pm
Hi guys,
I would love to know if there is a way to create an INDEX to my w.d.w.e.2 to let some friends Download some stuff.
can enyone help me to make it like this?
please visit this website to get the idea
[url edited out]
the website contains a great Anime Car Drift series direct download.
please tell me how and if I need to upload somethings to the internet
or if I just link my files to a website
Thank you very much.
Comment — December 20, 2007 @ 4:25 am
Dubai, I will NOT tolerate shameless self-promotion on my site, and I will NOT be part of any illegal file sharing. If you want to engage in that sort of thing, go do it somewhere else. If you post another comment like that, I’ll spam it. Thanks for understanding.
Comment — December 20, 2007 @ 7:33 am
[...] weeks ago, and have been using it since to store my photo library. You may recall I first tried a WD My Book World Edition II, then a WD My Book Pro Edition II to store my photos, and both failed me. The My Book Pro failed me [...]
Pingback — December 20, 2007 @ 7:37 am
I would love to hear the specifics about your experience. I am not a fanboy of WD or anything, but I am happy to help people work through their problems. Feel free to send me the info directly via email or post it in one complete posting so I dont have to piece it together and I will see what I can do for you.
Good luck!
Comment — December 23, 2007 @ 1:50 am
Question 1: I was using the MyBook with MioNet and PCs at work for a while until it became too much of a hassle. I’ve brought it home intending to use it with my Mac and was wondering if I need to bring it back to work in order to uninstall MioNet from the actual MyBook, or is MioNet simply associated with the PCs.
Question 2: Assuming I’m okay with regards to Q1, maybe someone could explain to me why when I have plugged the MyBook into my Airport Extreme, it doesn’t show up as one of my DHCP clients when I look through the Airport Utility. Does that imply that the MyBook is not connected properly to my router? And if so, how can I fix that?
Comment — December 24, 2007 @ 12:10 am
Emmett, both of your questions were already answered in previous comments. As suggested in the comment guidelines, please read through all of the comments before posting your own. Thanks.
Comment — December 24, 2007 @ 12:44 am
I’ve read through all the comments and I think it’s a matter of me not being able to understand completely how to determine the MyBook’s IP address. I assumed that by plugging it into the Airport Extreme I could assign an IP by reserving one for the MyBook’s MAC address, but the Airport isn’t even acknowledging it as a DHCP client.
If this is something to do with my Airport and not the MyBook, could you perhaps point towards other forum discussions about assigning IP’s? Am I not properly interpreting “Plug the drive into your router and give it a few minutes. Access your router and find out the IP address given to the drive.”
(Comment 55)?
Sorry if this is redundant. I really did read all the comments first, I think I’m tripping up on certain steps that “go without saying”.
Comment — December 24, 2007 @ 12:54 am
And I suppose I was asking for clarification about needing to “uninstall Mionet entirely in order for the read/write to work properly”. If I am working with a brand new computer that does NOT have Mionet, AND a MyBook that has previously interfaced with Mionet, am I still in danger of falling into traps because I never uninstalled Mionet from the actual MyBook?
I assume that Mionet is only software, and doesn’t affect the MyBook, but I just want to make sure.
Comment — December 24, 2007 @ 1:00 am
Emmett, the two questions are inter-related. Because you used the drive with Mionet before, you’ll need to reformat it — basically treat it as if you’ve just gotten it out of the box and set it up from scratch. You won’t have to uninstall Mionet from your work computer, although that’s advisable, now that you won’t be using it anymore. But you’ll need to browse directly to the drive (as described in previous comments) and reformat it completely, so that all of the shares set up by Mionet are removed, and there is nothing on the drive. Don’t quote me on this, but the Reset button on the back of the drive might do the same trick.
The drive refuses to configure itself to your Airport Extreme simply because it’s been configured with Mionet for another network. Resetting/reformatting it should bring its config back to DHCP and allow it to auto-configure to your home network. But remember, if you don’t reformat it, you’ll have have the shares and privileges set up by Mionet on it, and you won’t be able to read/write to it directly.
Comment — December 24, 2007 @ 7:24 am
Thanks Raoul, for your answers and your understanding. I’ll give it a shot next time I go to work. For now, I hope you enjoy your holidays and, whatever it is you’ll be celebrating, may it be merry.
Comment — December 24, 2007 @ 1:01 pm
So, I’m glad I found this blog and can’t wait to get home to try this out. I’m doing the Mac/PC thing and was also frustrated with the read/write issue, so I’m excited again.
I noticed (and I didn’t see it explicitly mentioned here) that I can’t rename or move files I’ve copied from Windows Explorer onto MyBook from my Mac, but if I make a copy of what was transferred to the drive, I CAN read/write, then delete the original files that I moved.
I don’t know if anything would get hosed up down the road, like if I worked on a file in Windows and wanted to do more on the Mac at another time.
In any event, I’m going to uninstall the software that came with it and re-read post #61.
Comment — December 24, 2007 @ 4:15 pm
So, I’m not clear on something. I can access the drive from the Mac and from the PC now and also prior to me uninstalling the Mionet. I had permissions issues where I couldn’t change the file names or move them. After the uninstall from the PC, I can now change the file names and move them.
If I duplicate what’s on my hard drive, the permissions become what I want them to be and I can delete the original files that were copied over.
Is this stupid? I mean, I copied a bunch of things over already and sometimes I got errors and had to leave files on the original drive because they were damaged or whatever. Everything on the new drive is readable. The copy will take 28 hours (according to the displayed estimate). Additionally, the data I transferred from CDs from my Mac are permissioned properly.
Lastly, I mean, this all started out with me wanting to scan through images I had to make a slide show from a trip in 2006. I got the bright idea that perhaps it’d be an ideal time to consolidate hard drives… HA!
Anyway, how was I supposed to reformat the drive? Sorry if this is a stupid question, but if I have to connect to it as a server on the Mac, and if it’s in my network on the PC and not displayed as a volume… What am I missing?
Plus the private ID folder is asking for a user name and password when I click on it and I don’t know what that’s all about.
Networking weirds me out. I can’t relate to it or figure it out and I need to make an iTunes playlist because the songs that are coming on are annoying me.
Also, how do I make ice?
Comment — December 25, 2007 @ 12:10 am
Christian, I assume you’re referring to my experience with the WD Pro II drive in your comment. WD reps contacted me after I posted my article and video online, and I’m working with their advanced support to see if the issues can’t be resolved. Believe me, I tried everything. There’s nothing complicated about plugging in a USB or Firewire drive, not like a network drive, anyway, but I still tried all sorts of configs to see what’s going on, and it just refuses to work with my Mac. So I’m waiting to hear back from them on this one.
Just to clarify things, for the rest of the people that are reading this, I’m talking about the WD Pro II drive in this comment, NOT the WD World Edition drive. Please don’t confuse the two.
Comment — December 26, 2007 @ 7:54 pm
Dear Raoul
Thanks for your Website and the time which you spent. The informations are really helpfully.
I also have a question regarding the my book world edition (Network).
When i try to log on the network drive with a limited windows user account i can see the mybook but i do not get permission to access or see the files. When i use the same PC and change the rights from limited to admin i do not have any problems and it woorks fine.
Any idea why and how to resolve?
Thanks in advance
Comment — December 27, 2007 @ 3:16 am
Juergen, since the My Book World uses a different file system than Windows, with its own permissions, I don’t see what link there is between your Windows account and the accounts on the drive. I think this has more to do with how you mapped the drive to your computer — if you did it manually — or if you’re using Mionet, how you installed and configured the application. If I were you, I’d double and triple check these things.
Comment — December 27, 2007 @ 8:45 am
Raoul,
Congrats on the post - wish I could have found this a couple of days ago! I bought a WD MB World based on the sales rep (@#$%) promising it was Mac-compatible, and I’m not sure what I spent more time on - trying to figure it out how to get it working or searching websites for assistance….
I’ve now got it working fine by completely avoiding Mionet and anything else on the installation CD, and rounding off with some of the tips on this post.
I’ll now attempt the remote access solution posted by Christian earlier - I recognise (most of) the long words and acronyms, which is not the same as understanding them….. and I don’t have the luxury of other people’s kit to practice on! Wish me luck.
Comment — December 30, 2007 @ 6:29 am
I bought the Terabyte World edition today. As my network at home consists of a WinXP laptop and PC, a Ubuntu PC and an XBox running as a media centre using XBMC I was aiming to use the HD as shared storage for all. I have no interest in the Access Anywhere features so I do not intend to install this (and it’s useless for the Ubuntu and XBox systems). I managed to find out the IP that had been assigned to the MyBook through my router setup page and was able to access the MyBook without a problem, enter the Shared Storage manager, setup user settings and several shared folders (with requisite access) and ensure it had the same network name as the rest of my devices. I believed this was enough to enable it to be accesible to my networked devices using SMB but after several reboots and attempts at accessing the drive I am still unable to see it or browse to it on the network using “My network places” or the Linux equivalent (even on the XBox it has no problem browsing to my Linux and Windows HD’s). I’m stumped now - I just don’t know what else I can do.
Comment — December 30, 2007 @ 3:40 pm
Ah success - I think. I tried turning off my firewall and typing in \\MyBookWorld to the address bar. That did it on my laptop - how I’ll do this from my XBox is anybody’s guess at the moment though.
Comment — December 30, 2007 @ 3:52 pm