Western Digital My Book World Edition II 2TB Dual-Drive Network Storage

Pros: Purchased a week ago. Finished backing up all of my stuff. So far I am very happy with the purchase. (1) Easy to use. I started copying files 15 min after opened the box. Web interface is intuitive. (2) Small. I put it in the TV cabinet (3) Cheap (in terms of price per GB) compared with other small home NAS. (4) Quiet. Never noticed a noise. (5) Customizable. Some options which required some hacking for older versions are now available through the web interface. For example, you can easily... - Turn off Mionet - Enable SSH, FTP - Change between Raid 0 and 1 (6) I think the blue light is cool (as opposed to another reviewer who wants to turn it off). (7) Default is Raid0 (Mirror). I remember somebody mentioned that the default used to be Raid1 for an older version of My Book, but that's not the case anymore.

Cons: (1) A bit slower compared with newer (and more expensive) models. But unless you are copying a coupleof GB files like movies, I did not find it a serious problem. Actually, (I might be wrong but...) I feel that the machine is more responsive after turning off Mionet. I use SFTP to access remotely which is fast enough and my guess is it is faster than through Mionet. (2) It would have been nice if I can connect the unit to my PC through Firerie, eSATA or USB for a faster initial backup.

Overall Review: All in all, so far I am a happy customer. The only thing I have to figure out is a way to do the incremental backup without using the default software. (does it require mionet?) I also want to try the media streaming function (using DLNA). I might add to this review after I try these things.

Pros: Network Access Storage....need I say more. I will anyway. As for the person giving a bad rating because its not staying on the network....send it back...sounds like you got a faulty unit, either that or your network is not setup and functioning correctly...i have no issues with it on my network...I stream divx, xvid, mp3's without issue to my 360, PS3 and more. The backup software works...if you want it...I'm using it as 1TB mirror....best for my needs.

Cons: Only con for me is the speed.....its like most NAS pretty darn slow....but unless you're gonna spend $1500-2000 don't expect anything faster. It's not that bad unless you normally copy 20-30GB's to your drives at a time....which I don't...but i do several gig's here and there and its not bad at all.

Overall Review: Power supply should have the brick inline....not on the plug itself....plugging it into a UPS can be a problem if the outlets are close together.....all power supply's should be this way.

Pros: RAID, physically small. only slightly larger than 2 hard drives stacked together. Which does bring about heat concerns. I had the device on it's side under a book cabinet and got some thermal warnings. I moved it and all is well.

Cons: Logging into the HTTP interface gave me some trouble. I was using the correct name/password combo, even typing it with one finger. Suddenly it let me in, I changed the password and haven't had any problems since. I've experienced one unexplained network disconnect just recently with nothing in the logs.

Overall Review: So far I am happy with the device. I think for the price, it's worth the money to save the time and trouble of building a NAS with RAID capability yourself. Why reinvent the wheel, unless you're poor and are using hardware you already own.

Pros: works alot better then the old versions. unfortinally my last one crashed. always seems to crash right after the warranty is up? hmmm. this system is the same setup but different version. seems to be much faster response with the network.

Cons: its still a wd hd and have hd's fail on me all the time.

Overall Review: dont rely just on this product for raid.

Pros: Good price, Raid 1, intuitive user interface, provides ssh interface to its OS which is linux :-). Can be easily mounted to linux boxes via samba. Low power, low heat drives. Itunes finds it right away. Does what I want it to do for a home NAS.

Cons: Has too many apps loaded. Need to stop or remove some. The user interface, a web app, hung with a message about resources meaning the HTTP server was starved. Rebooted from a linux console via SSH and Putty and then stopped apps I did not need. No problems since. Cannot turn off MIONET, the software for external access, using the web app. It turns itself back on a minute after you turn it off.

Overall Review: Bought it to replace a Lacie NAS that had bricked. Drive was OK so I hooked the Lacie drive to a linux netbook via a USB to SATA/PATA adapter. That adapter has saved my bacon on a couple of occasions. Got the adapter from newegg a while back for under $20. Copied the files from the Lacie drive to the WD NAS. How you copy files to the NAS can affect the speed. For example, dragging and dropping large directories from Nautilus to the WD NAS was much slower than just copying via a console command. Would expect windows file manager to act slower than a dos copy. I believe the small processor and memory are the main speed constraints. Its running a lot of stuff so turn off what you don't use. Learn some basic linux so that you can logon to the NAS to see what is going on if you have a problem and so that you can reboot from the console if required. Also, change the root password ASAP in case someone hacks your network. All of the NASs of this genre run linux, so same for them.

Pros: Great concept, easy setup (for most), and simple software. I really liked the mirrored RAID and the drop-in drive features. If I had a need for this on my home network, I'd buy this right away. NewEgg's customer service is 110% excellent.

Cons: Not a fan of the case color. The drive setup was not able to be configured to run on a secure work network (requires login ID/password and authentication software). I had to return this drive because you can't easily use it as a direct (non-network) backup to a PC......I'd have to disconnect from the network to access the drive. Would have kept it if it had both network cable access as well as USB access. The USB port is only for adding extra storage capacity.

Pros: Received drive in less than 24 hours... usually takes 3 days??? The drive was VERY EASY to use and set up. Popped in the disk... followed instructions.... and we are up and running. Worked with XP, Vista and Windows 7. The speed seems just fine for what we are doing. We are using it as a central storage unit for our small business.

Cons: None so far.

Pros: Easy to set-up and configure

Cons: Slow operation. Hardware failure after about 2 1/2 years of moderate use. Ironically, the hardware that failed was not the drives themselves (which were configured in a Raid 1 format), but the built-in nic

Overall Review: I thought I was saving money a couple of years back when I bought this, but all I ended up doing is costing myself money, time, frustration in trying to recover my important files. I really wish I'd gone elsewhere or just put together a mini-itx Linux machine.