FOR A FAMILY’S VALUABLE DATA
Offers an Easy, Double-Safe Way to Backup Computers and Share Media
Throughout the Home
LAKE FOREST, Calif. – June 24, 2009 – WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world’s leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its newly redesigned My Book® World Edition™ II dual- drive network storage system in capacities of up to 4 TB. With the double protection of two Mirrored (RAID 1) drives and continuous backup software, the My Book World Edition II network storage system provides an extra-safe place for users to back up and store the data and digital media from all the computers on their network in one central location. Available now at select retailers and the WD online store, the new dual-drive systems join the recently introduced (Feb. 2009) My Book World Edition and are compatible with PC and Mac® computers.
According to a July 2008 report by research firm Parks Associates, the number of households worldwide with data networks will grow from around 170 million in 2008 to 240 million by year-end 2012. The firm also reports that the average broadband household will see its digital media storage needs grow to nearly 900 GB by year-end 2012. In addition, consumers indicate that the most important feature for a network-attached storage (NAS) device is the amount of available storage. With its massive 4 TB capacity, the My Book World Edition II network storage system will serve this rapidly growing need for home data storage.
The My Book World Edition II network storage system uses RAID 1 (Mirrored ) technology to automatically and continuously maintain a second copy of user’s data. If one drive in the two-drive system ever fails, the system continues to run and the data is safe. In addition, the new
My Book World Edition II network hard drive includes software that simplifies the task of setting up automatic and continuous data backup for all the PCs in the home. The My Book World Edition II storage systems ship in Mirrored mode and use half the capacity for file redundancy.
With its media server capabilities and fast transfer speeds, this high-capacity system makes it simple to build a centralized digital media library that everyone can easily share. Music, photos and videos can be streamed directly from the My Book World Edition II storage system to any PC, Mac or connected DLNA® media player (such as TVs, Microsoft® Xbox 360 and Sony® PlayStation®3 game consoles or wireless digital pictures frames) using the integrated UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) media server and iTunes® Music server software. Users can also securely access their files from anywhere in the world through the Internet using the free MioNet® remote access service included with every My Book World Edition II storage system.
“Families have more and more digital media like movies, photos and music to store, share and protect. Having two drives inside the My Book World Edition II network storage system, instantaneously and automatically duplicating data, offers consumers the peace of mind of double safe, real-time protection of their valuable content,” said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD’s branded products group. “Families can relax knowing their valuable media is backed up while enjoying the ability to stream their content to a plethora of different devices from PCs and Macs to PS3s, Xbox 360s and the latest connected TVs.”
Price and Availability
The new My Book World Edition II network storage systems are available now in 2 TB and 4 TB capacities at select retailers and WD’s online store (www.shopwd.com). MSRP for the My Book World Edition II dual-drive storage system with 4 TB is $699.99 USD and 2 TB is $399.99 USD.
Features
The new My Book World Edition II network drive features:
About WD
WD, one of the storage industry’s pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company designs and produces reliable, high-performance hard drives and solid state drives that keep users’ data accessible and secure from loss. Its advanced technologies are configured into applications for client and enterprise computing, embedded systems and consumer electronics, as well as its own consumer storage and media products.
WD was founded in 1970. The company’s storage products are marketed to leading OEMs, systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital® and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company’s Web site (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.
Related Content:
Photo Printer, Drives & Hardware Forum
More Digital Photo Storage News & Articles
Official WD My Book World Edition II Web Page
Western Digital Web Site
You have the capcity listed as 2 and 4 Gb, instead of Tb. Small, but critical, mistake when reviewing devices like this.
I have the WD Worldbook 1TB drive for over a year. It is worthless! Here are the reasons:
- The MioNet software is full of problems. I spent more time reinstalling, rebooting, trouble shooting random errors than actually using the drive. Currently I can’t even access the drive for an unknown reason. I was scared to death that I lost the data. Fortunately, for some unknown reasons, I can access the drive using another computer.
- It is very, very, very slow. If you think buying this large capacity drive to put lots of files on it, you are dead wrong. Yes, you can write tons and tons of data on the drive. The problem is that it takes a very long time to do that – to the point that it is not usable. WD told me that the transfer rate for these drives is 3 to 5 megabits per second. That means you can only transfer about 37kb per minute to the drive. Base on that fact, it would take 47+ years to fill a 1TB drive. Now, that was what WD support told me. My experience is that I can transfer at a significantly higher rate than 3 to 5 mbps; however, it still took me over two hours to transfer 2.3 GB of data on 16,000 files to the drive.
- Availability is a big issue. As you may have already know, you need MioNet central server to verify who you are before you can access the drive. The problem is that MioNet seems to not be available during the late night hours; perhaps they shut down to do maintenance. That also happen to be the time that I can spare to do this sloooowww, looooong back up to the Wordbook drive. With this lack of availability at night, my back up would fail in the late hours. Now I have a situation where I can’t reliability back up at night. I can’t back up during the day because I need the laptop to do work.
- Getting your data from the drive is a probelm also. If you were successful putting a ton of data on the drive, you will have a heck of a time access to that back up data. You will have that same slow transfer rate and low / intermittent accessibility to the drive.
- A constant fear of the backed up data can disappear. While trouble shooting the problem with a WD support person, he concluded that the drive is bad and I should reformatt or replace it. This was a horror scenarior for me – loosing the only back up of my data. Fortunately I did not take the advice – and through hours and hours of tinkering, I was able to determine that my data is still intact – because, by accident, I was able to access the drive and the data using another laptop. Now I am paranoid about this drive and started looking for alternative solution.
How is that for great engineering and great reliability! Look somewhere else for a solution. Don’t look at western digital worldbook and you will save yourself a lot of frustration, a lot of time, not mentioning saving the money from buying something that has a high chance of becoming nothing more than an expensive paper weight.
To “Not Pleased”: you don’t know what you are talking about.
A speed of 3-5 Mbits/s doesn’t translate to 37KB/min.
Learn how to use a calculator:
1 Mb/s = 1024Kb/s = 1KB/s = 60 KB/min
so 3-5 Mb/s = 180 KB/min – 300 KB/min.
Now that we have the numbers done, it is not true the MyBook gets that transfer speed. Since you obviously can’t tell the difference between 1 MB and 1Mb, it’s very likely they told you the drive can get 3-5 MB/s instead (about 8 times faster than 3-5 Mb/s).
Even that is not true. I have transferred files to the drive at about 7.2 MB/svia FTP. Slow for anybody with a Gigabit connection but acceptable for those of use who still use a 10-100 Mb router.
The drive has its problems, no doubt but there’s no need to make up stuff.
I bought this drive oner or two years ago with a gigabit switch.
also i have since about 3 year a buffalo linkstation pro.
i can tell u that i am able to transfer data to the buffalo 6 times faster then to the WD.
Believe it or not. The WD NAS System is bullshit!