Western Digital My Book World Edition 1TB Network Hard Drive

By Berwyn

Computer kit

08 May 2008 11:12

An Interesting bit of kit I bought recently was the Western Digital My Book World Edition 1TB Network Hard Drive. I wanted a network drive to dump data onto, if for no other reason but to do some house cleaning. This solution was advertised at PC World for less than £150. I bought it just for the massive Terabyte of space you get for the price, but it does come with some other interesting features. Setup Setup was really easy, I chose to plug it in to my network using a cable rather than using the wireless feature. Not that I’ve got anything against it’s wireless ability or even tested it for that matter but I just prefer to sleep at night knowing that a hard cable has just got to be more secure than wireless. In any case if it’s within reach, why not plug it in. Back up I received an interesting comment from the company that supports our servers – “If that goes pop then you lose all the data stored on it”. Fair comment I suppose but if used as just another level of protection then the risk isn’t that great. If all your photo’s are kept on one hard drive then it is at risk but a copy of everything on one of these network drives is a real easy way to keep all your work safe. Burn everything onto DVD’s and store them in a safe if you want total protection. File Access After running the install you get an extra drive letter in your ‘My Computer’. Go onto that new drive and it’s there ready for saving to or opening files from. Simple as that really. You can also install the software on several other computers on your network and they’ll all get access to this drive. The install picks up the drive on the network automatically so setup really is simple. The downside is it also lists and gives you access to the main C drive of the member computers, so trust is the key here. You could for instance wonder around another members hard drive and have access to all their files. To be fair I don’t see this as a problem in my use because the only computers allowed to access it are all trusted anyway. You can also access this drive, along with your main hard drive via the Internet. So you could be on your holidays somewhere and after a few minutes on a foreign computer you’ve got the ability to retrieve your files from home or save new files from your location there to the drive back at home. All that really is easy! You get a username and a password that you enter after going to a web address, that’s it! Other features that are available, just as easy I might add, is for instance you can access your webcam at home. Imagine being away and logging on at some Cyber café and seeing what’s going on in your home/garden/office etc. Further information can be reached at their main website http://www.mionet.com/products/what.jsp