jock
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Post by jock on Aug 6, 2008 9:01:42 GMT
I'm contemplating getting a NAS for my LAN.
I've been looking at the Western Digital My Book World 1Tb device which on the face of it looks great ... however (there's always a "but") ... reviews say it's slow (not a problem for what I want) and some say they've had problems accessing it from Macs (a major problem for me!)
I'm not interested in seeing it from outside the LAN so the remote access software isn't an issue, all I want is a NAS to work with two Windows XP boxes, one Windows Vista box and my iMac running Leopard.
I've had issues before where I had a NAS and it's now a door-stop, so I don't want to waste money when I could buy an Airport Extreme and a 1Tb USB drive.
Does anyone have any experience of these devices with Macs? I've searched the web and can't find a definitive answer - I even emailed WD, but so far no response.
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jock
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Post by jock on Aug 14, 2008 8:07:23 GMT
OK, so no-one here has a WD NAS. Well, I do now. It arrived yeaterday - I got the MyBookWorld Edition II (dual drives) from IT247 because they were the cheapest I could find (as Will correctly guessed in BritishMac074, I am of Scottish origin, but now live in Yorkshire ... and as they say, a Yorkshire man is simply a Scotsman with the generosity squeezed out!) I paid for the cheapest delivery option, but it still arrived within three days, so full marks to IT247 for their service. I opened the box and removed the unit, power supply and ethernet cable. I plugged the power brick in, plugged the ethernet cable into my switch and ... nothing happened! Then I read the manual ... there's a power switch on the front! I pressed the power switch and on it came - a nice "twirly" blue light on the front. Very quiet otherwise. I had to log into my router to find what address it had managed to get from DHCP, put that into Safari and up comes the web interface. The rest was pretty simple - it was up and running in 15 minutes. I didn't install the Mionet software (because (a) ultimately it would cost me money and (b) I have a VPN into my server anyway). All I want the NAS for is a backup device - so I enabled RAID 1 (default is RAID 0) for reliability - I know it halves the capacity, but as I'm storing music, photos and movies and as some of the photos and movies are irreplaceable, I want data integrity. I'd read reports that this unit runs hot ... well, mine doesn't. I'd read reports that it is noisy ... mine isn't. I'd read report that data transfer is slow ... that depends on your definition of "slow" - I have to say it's no slower than transferring data to the hard disk on my server - about 20 minutes to transfer 3Gb which, bearing in mind the purpose I bought the drive for, isn't too bad. I can see everything on there from the iMac, from my Wind*ws 2003 Server and from my wife's Wind*ws V1sta wireless laptop. So, first impressions? If you're looking for data integrity i.e. a backup device, with a load of storage space, it's well worth considering. I will post a more long term review here when I've had it for a bit longer (if anyone is interested!)
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Post by Forum Cat on Aug 16, 2008 17:07:31 GMT
You seem to have found a nice bit of kit.
On the data security front though you do need a backup. If the HDD fails you are still in the soup. I was wondering what your plans were in this regard?
Mr Cat
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jock
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Post by jock on Aug 19, 2008 8:58:04 GMT
You seem to have found a nice bit of kit. On the data security front though you do need a backup. If the HDD fails you are still in the soup. I was wondering what your plans were in this regard? Remember this is a backup unit - not my main storage, so I already have a seperate copy of the data. It's just I was getting worried I have so many photographic and video memories, if my primary storage goes, I'm sunk. The unit I bought has two 500Gb drives (not the slightly cheaper 1Tb single drive unit) and I've configured it as RAID 1 - my thinking being I'll get another identical drive sometime (soon!) and use it as a standby, so should either drive fail, I can simply put in the spare and it'll rebuild itself. I tend to set up the machines at work with RAID 1 and the only problem comes if we have to replace the controllers - but as they're mainly used as backup devices anyway, we already have a completely seperate units with the "real" data on. I reckon it's actually the cheapest and most reliable method of backing up.
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Post by Forum Cat on Aug 19, 2008 10:23:48 GMT
Ah! got it.
I assumed that you were using your NAS as a server. i.e. no local version of the photos and video.
Out of interest have you (or indeed any of our forumites) come across the Drobo? I would value your opinion.
Mr Cat
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Post by Forum Cat on Aug 19, 2008 10:24:30 GMT
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Post by Alan on Aug 19, 2008 13:09:47 GMT
You love Cali Lewis, you do. ;-)
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jock
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Post by jock on Aug 20, 2008 6:48:25 GMT
I looked at Drobo when I was looking at RAID arrays, but believe it or not, the thing that put me off as much as anything was the lack of reviews!
I like to think of other people having made all the mistakes before I spend my money!
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Post by Forum Cat on Aug 21, 2008 8:05:09 GMT
You love Cali Lewis, you do. ;-) Yes, yes I do.
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Post by Alan on Aug 21, 2008 21:58:43 GMT
You love Cali Lewis, you do. ;-) Yes, yes I do. Well don't we all, eh? :-)
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keith
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Post by keith on Aug 23, 2008 20:11:33 GMT
Wish I'd seen this before, my WD MyBook just managed to trash itself and there was nothing I could do to recover the data. After a reformat it survived for a while and then went titsup.com again. I'd never have another one, it ran like an oven in that uncooled enclosure.
Drobos look good, but are getting mixed reports regarding speed. The original one was slow and I was expecting the new firewire one to be a lot quicker but it doesn't appear to be.
I'd never own another WD MyBook btw.
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jock
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Post by jock on Aug 27, 2008 6:53:41 GMT
Keith, I'm surprised at your comments and I can only assume you had the single drive model of the MyBook.
Last night, after much "furtling" (I love that word - to me it's just what it sounds!) I got my NAS working with Time Machine. Of course this would be the first Time Machine backup so I expected it to take a while. I kicked it off at about 21:00 and it was only about about a third of the way through at 22:30, however the MyBook was warm to the touch, aothough not hot and I hadn't heard the fan come on since I started the box up. It was finished this morning and everything looks OK.
On the subject of WD drives, I have a 160Gb drive in a machine I use as a DVR with four connected CCTV cameras - I expected this machine to die after a couple of years - after all it was built on the cheap - so far, after 5+ years, it's still going strong and silent. This wasn't a server grade HDD, it was a simply off-the-shelf item - two Seagates, an IBM and a Fujitsu have given up the ghost in that same time period!
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