Back in January we told you about WD’s new storage and personal cloud device, the My Book Live Duo. Now we get hand-on with it, so here is our review.
Connect this powerful drive to your wireless router for shared storage on your home network. Share data with all your computers, stream media to your entertainment center, and get to your files from anywhere with remote access and mobile apps. And with RAID 1 technology, you have double-safe backup for your data.
Who are WD?
From their website:
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.
Specifications
Dimensions
- Height: 6.5 in (165 mm)
- Depth: 6.2 in (157 mm)
- Width: 3.9 in (99 mm)
- Weight: 4.98 lb (1.09 kg)
System Requirements
- Windows XP (SP3), Windows Vista, Windows 7
- Mac OS X Leopard, Snow Leopard, or Lion
- DLNA/UPnP enabled devices
- Internet connection for remote access
Supported Browsers
- Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher
- Safari 4.0 or higher
- Firefox 3.6 or higher
- Google Chrome 14.0 and later on supported Windows and Mac OS platforms
The My Book Live Duo comes as either a 4TB drive or a 6TB drive, and both variants support Gigabit Ethernet.
What’s in the Box?
The box contains the Duo, an installation CD, an Ethernet cable, an AC adaptor and a quick install guide.
I have tried PogoPlug, which this appears to simply be a more full featured take on the same idea. The big issue was with remote access, streaming, etc. you are limited by the upload speeds of your home network. That at times was a very big and frustrating limitation.
thanks Anthony
I have a PogoPlug here for review and so will compare the two.
And I agree, upload speeds are a big issue!
I got a WD My Book Live Duo 2 days ago. Everything worked well after the instalation but suddenly the server was gone from my MacBook pro and my IMAC’s Finders. I called the technical support and he confirmed that this issue has been reported in OS X 10.6 and 10.7. This person said that they had to talk to Apple because the problem is with the OS X 10.6. Has anyone experience this issue? Any fix?
Thanks for this – I haven’t experienced this myself, but let’s hope a fix is forthcoming soon though.