Western Digital My Book Live (1TB)

The WD My Book Live NAS server isn't able to do what its predecessor, the My Book World Edition, did a year ago. The World Edition made a huge splash in the pond of NAS servers' throughput performance, proving itself to be by far the fastest single-volume NAS of the time. This only means that NAS servers have come a long way since, as the new My Book Live, though not the fastest, is still very fast in our test.

The new server, while lacking many features found in other NAS servers, also remains one of the simplest and easiest-to-use NAS servers for the home environment. At the street price of just around $150 for 1TB or $200 for the 2TB version, home and novice users just can't go wrong with it.

Setup and ease of use
Similar to the My Book World Edition, the My Book Live is as easy to set up as plugging it into the power socket and the router. After that the NAS will appear in Windows' network browser or in Mac OX 10's Finder. The server also supports Time Machine, which is a feature not present in the My Book World Edition.

For those who are really unfamiliar with networking, the My Book Live comes with a CD that helps discover the NAS server in the network, set it up, and map the network drives. After that you also have the option to install WD SmartWare software for ongoing server management.

Advanced users can skip this software and use the NAS server's Web interface, also called Dashboard, to further customize the server. The Web interface allows access to many more server settings, such as user accounts, remote access, media streaming, and so on. The My Book Live's Web interface is significantly more robust and self-explanatory than that of the My Book World Edition. Most users will be able to figure things out just by looking at the way items are organized and explained. However, the interface is still sluggish at times, with the transition between different parts taking up to a few seconds to complete.

The My Book Live's default share folder, called "public," contains three subfolders for sharing particular types of content: Shared Music, Shared Videos, and Shared Pictures. When you put appropriate content in each of these folders, the content will be automatically made available to other network devices. When logging in to the Web interface, you can turn on or off the media-streaming features for any of the shared folders. They can select the type of content to be streamed, be it video, music, photos, or all three. The My Book Live is compatible with iTunes and DLNA- or UPnP-enabled devices.

Features
Unlike the My Book Edition, the My Book Live doesn't have any USB ports, or any other peripheral ports, for that matter. This means you can't add more storage to the server via an external hard drive. This also means you shouldn't use the server as the only storage place of important data, as there's no way to back up its content to another drive.

The My Book Live has no support for printers, PC-less downloading, IP cameras, or many other features found in other NAS servers. It does, however, offer easy-to-set-up remote access via MioNet. Unfortunately, when it comes to usability, this couldn't be any worse of a choice.

Basically, once you register the NAS server with an account at MioNet via its Web interface, you can log in to the NAS server from anywhere over the Internet to get data off of it, using a Web browser. However, this doesn't allow for downloading or uploading files; all you can do is open files directly from the remote location. This obviously only works when you want to open small files, such as Word documents or photos. With large files, you will be dealing with a frozen Web page most of the time.

You can improve this by downloading and installing MioNet software on the remote computer. However, this is a rather involved and potentially frustrating process. First of all, the software, called MioNet Now, has some system-setting conflicts with popular antivirus software, especially if you run 64-bit Windows. To install it successfully and avoid blue-screen crashes you might need to change your antivirus/firewall settings software, which is not an easy task for most users. Secondly, MioNet Now installs a lot of services on your computer that start by themselves each time the computer boots, potentially slowing it down. Nonetheless, when successfully installed, MioNet Now indeed enables you to access the shared folders of the NAS server just like the way you do it from within a local network.

In all, the remote solution seems to be better suited for business users. For home users, it's arguably one of the worst solutions we've seen and should be skipped entirely if you want to access the NAS from a remote computer. If you are an iPhone user, however, it's a different story.

The MioNet service also works with a free iPhone app, called WD Photos, that you can download from the App Store. The app is simple and once you're signed in it allows you to access the photos stored on the My Book Live NAS server, much like the way you access photos stored on the iPhone itself. We tried this out and found it a fun feature to have for those who want to quickly show photos to friends, without having to use up the storage space of their iPhone (or iPod Touch).

Performance
If the remote-access feature let us down, the My Book Life's performance more than made up for it. The NAS server was very fast in our tests, consistently being the third and second fastest in our write and read test.

In the write test, the server scored 340.3Mbps, taking the third place, just trailing the Asus TS Mini and HP MediaSmart Server LX195, which scored 476.1Mbps and 341.8Mbps, respectively.

In the read test, the My Book Live did slightly better, with 529.9Mbps, taking second place to the Asus TS Mini, which scored 690.3Mbps.

NAS performance (in Mbps)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Read

Write

Asus TS Mini

690.3 

467.1 

WD My Book Live

529.9 

340.3 

GoFlex Home Network Storage System

453.8 

152.7 

Vebatim MediaShare

435.1 

224.4 

HP MediaSmart Server LX195

393.7 

341.8 

LG N1T1

387.5 

243.8 

HP MediaSmart Server EX495

380.4 

279.6 

My Book World Edition

206.6 

120.1 

QNAP TS109 Pro

152.4 

101.4 

Apple Time Capsule

114.2 

81.2 

Apple Time Capsule

114.2 

81.2 

ASUS RT-N16

48.8 

46 

Netgear WNDR3700

40 

17.8 

Cisco Linksys E3000

32.2 

57.1 

During our testing, the My Book Live performed without any hiccups. It also performed quietly and remained cool throughout.

Service and support
Similar to the My Book World Edition, the MyBook Live also has a three-year warranty from Western Digital, which is long compared with the one-year warranty of most NAS servers. Toll-free phone support is available Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT, Fridays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Western Digital's site offers e-mail and tech support, FAQs, a searchable knowledge base, and downloads. Unfortunately, unlike other vendors, Western Digital only allows registered users to access its download section.

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