WD My Book World Edition

I picked up one of these last week from eBay and expect it to arrive mid-week. It is a network storage device that can be accessed from any computer on the network. I purchased the 1.5T model and expect to use the RAID-1 mirroring giving me ~750Gig storage. It will mostly be used for computer backups (I will miss Norton Ghost) and for photo storage.

Sams Club has the 1T unit for about $300 now but I was able to get the 1.5 from eBay for only slightly more and as I plan to use mirroring by getting the 1.5, I still have a fairly usable amount for files and photos. I could not quite talk myself into getting a 2T unit though in a few years I may wish that I did.

This model has a nice feature in that I can create a folder on the drive and designate it as Internet accessible. It can then be accessed via a web page or PCAnywhere style client software. In this way, instead of having to compress or reduce photos to share with friends and family, we can just send them to the web site or the client access software. Like a mini-myspace or youtube.

The device plugs right into my wireless router and when I hook it up, I will put both on a UPS. All of the computers that are on my network are now wireless and so even if the power goes out, my network will stay up. As soon as I get another UPS for the HP all-in-one, all of my network resources will be available 24/7 regardless of the power situation outside. I just want to make sure that the printer UPS allows me to turn off the alarm as it will be in the bedroom closet and we have brown-outs and mini-black outs all of the time where I live in Florida.

Update: 2/3/2008

I purchased a 1.5TB unit from an eBay seller at a pretty good price. The unit turned out to be used, not new and broken to boot. I returned it, they replaced it with the SAME unit and I returned it a second time for a refund. I picked up a 1TB unit from SAMS but it turned out to be a World Edition, not a World Edition II. The difference being the IIs have support for RAID 1. I will wind up retuning it and most likely get a 2TB unit from COSCO. During all of this, I tried to get the various drives to work with limited success. I can access the drives using a direct IP path but the included MioNet software never seems to be able to find the drive. When I get the (hopefully) final drive from COSCO I will give it another attempt and then call WD support. From my limited experience with this system it is a real good idea but I am not very happy with or impressed with the MioNet client software.

Update: 2/23/2008

I am going to have to give up on this for a bit. It is just not working out right. I tried yet another unit but could not get the software to work and apparently the drive was more than 6 months old and as such, the "free" support ran out so I could not get support for getting the software working properly. I returned it and will try sometime in the future after these have been out longer and have had the kinks worked out (of the software and support chain).