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Great NAS device for File Sharing within Network, Skip Mionet (2008-11-19)
I recently decided to do away with my Desktop computer in favor of an older laptop that I had previously had not been using. I ran into the issue of not having enough space on the Laptop's hard drive to store all of my music, videos, and pictures. I purchased the My Book World edition a few weeks ago, and thus far everything has been going exactly to plan.

I have iTunes installed on my primary computer, but instead of keeping the files locally on my drive, I now keep them on the My Book. The original transfer took some time, with speeds of approximately 2 megabytes per second, you can do the math on the time it would take to transfer a full library of movies and music, but that wasn't a problem at all. iTunes functions absolutely perfectly, the only noticeable difference is the first time that I synced my iPod, it took a few hours to copy everything over, again, because of the data rate over the network. Each subsequent sync, though, has been speedy, as I don't change more than a few songs, podcasts, or movies, at a time.

The drive is really doing everything that I've wanted it to. It allows me to access the drive from any computer on my network, without issue.

The reason that this review did not get 5 stars is because of Mionet. As you have likely read in other reviews, the software is relatively easy to setup, but it very much hinders the use of the files on your network. First of all, when you transfer files onto the drive using Mionet, you CANNOT modify the files without going through Mionet, again. This causes a big problem when iTunes tries to update tags in songs, or movies, and cannot write to the files. This crippled my use, and made me investigate other options.

The Western Digital site does give instructions to login to the device directly, and I highly recommend using that option. It is just as easy as logging into your router from your PC. You launch a browser, type in the default IP address, (something along the lines of 192.168.1.x), and you can do all of the configuration from there.

I have Windows XP automatically mount the drive, once again, a snap, and it appears under My Computer just like the C, and D drives.

Don't bother installing Mionet, I went against this advice, and that means having to copy my entire library twice, again, sort of time consuming when working with 80 - 100gb of information.

Great drive for sharing files on a network, and a great option if you are running out of hard drive space, but don't want to have an external hard drive on your desk at all times. Skip Mionet, but all else has been wonderful.

What a piece of garbage! (2008-11-06)
After a year and 10 days of using it, the the thing just failed to boot up one day. Since I've used it for over a year it is out of the waranty. All my backups, business backups, family pictures, tons of software gone. I put up with everything others say here, but never expected anything like this. Went to the store to buy a new one and it didnt even boot up out of the box. I am taking it back today. WHAT A PIECE OF CR..!

No 64bit drivers, misleading speed, incomplete setup instructions (2008-11-04)
At 3-5 MB/sec, this drive's speed is embarassingly slow and more appropriate for a USB 1.1. device rather than a 1 Gb device. The package includes no 64 bit version of the software and WD does not intend to release a 64 bit version. While it is possible to connect to the drive through the SMB protocol, the manual fails to mention the device's default name. I was finally able to connect by checking my router's DHCP entries.

Great way to backup data (2008-11-03)
Unit is very easy to use and you can secure files at a very good price. Speed is a factor but if you dont transfer large files all the time it is no big deal no differnet then transferring files accrossed any lan there is a delay. I would recommend this product very easy to use and works well a good way to backup files.

Returned immediately (2008-10-02)
I had nothing but problems with this. No after hours technical support and the website did not give me advice on the problems I was having. It also caused some of the setting on my machine to be reset so that I lost blue tooth device functionality till I reinstalled, and knocked other users in my home off of the system. All in all a headache that I just don't need.