SmallNetBuilder

Introduction

If you’re a manufacturer of NAS devices, you face a lot of competition. With declining costs of storage, manufacturers have to seek ways to differentiate their products in what’s increasingly becoming a commodity market. Synology, for example, has loaded up their Cube Station CS407 with a plethora of servers. Similarly, D-Link’s DNS-323 and Buffalo Technology’s LinkStation Live have built-in DLNA UPnP AV servers. 

Western Digital’s My Book World Edition differentiates itself from its competition by offering, as its name implies, remote access from anywhere in the world. Powered by technology from its recent acquisition of Mionet, the World Edition includes an embedded host that makes it securely available on the Internet—even if no other computers on your network are turned on.

Western Digital ships two versions of the World Edition. The single drive version is simply called the World Edition. The World Edition II is a two-drive device that, in addition to the features of the single drive model, features RAID 1 mirroring for data redundancy. Unlike the single drive model, the World Edition II is designed for easy access for the user to replace a drive if necessary. Here’s a chart of the available capacities (capacities shown for World Edition II are for RAID 0 configuration) and pricing:

Product Tour

Figure 1: My Book World Edition front view

My test unit was the 500 GB single drive World Edition. As its name implies, it does indeed look like a book. The glossy white plastic case, measuring 6.78” X 5.63” X 2.23” complements any office décor. On the front panel (Figure 1), there’s a power switch that is surrounded by two blue rings of LEDs. The outer ring indicates power and activity. The inner ring is a capacity gauge that indicates the approximate amount of space used. Each segment of the inner ring represents approximately 1/6 of the drive’s capacity.