Western Digital My Book Live Personal Storage

[luis94uk]

Hey , my mum impulse bought one of these " http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Personal-Storage-Attached/dp/B004DTXFDS/ref=sr_1_sc_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1343344312&sr=1-3-spell"

she was looking for a usb external hard-drive and ended up buying this one ( due to a salesman recommending it ) and i would like to know whether anyone has information regarding how it works as its a network hard-drive

would like to know :

When its connected will the transfer speeds run from our connection ( we have a 10 mb from virgin media ) or will our speeds not be affected

are there any downsides to this compared to an external hard-drive which was the original target.

will it work with a tv if we put a dongle into it ( i understand this may be varied upon manufacturer )

and just anything else we may need to know encase we have to get a refund for it

Thanks for any replies

Luis

 

[luis94uk]

anyone get any information on this as we're wondering whether to get a refund or not

 

[tsnor]

Hi,

This type of NAS drive is typically attached to your local network safely behind the firewall.

Virgin Media probably gave you a router for your 10MB service. The router has some 100Mb or 1Gb ports. You plug the drive into the port with an ethernet cable that should have come with the drive. (100 Mb and 1 Gb ports look the same and negotiate, your drive will transfer at the highest speed of the port). ((Depending on how you set up security on the router you may need to enter a key and/or plug a MAC address into router -- this is not likely))

With 100Mb you are limited to 10MB (megabytes) a second. With 1Gb you are limited by drive in enclosure to about 20-30 MB/sec (NAS protocol) maybe higher. Upper limit is 100Mb/sec but you will not hit this.

You will need to map the NAS drive on yoyur mom's PC. The drive should come with instructions. Or google MAP NETWORK DRIVE.

Net: you can make this work. And it will not effect your connection speed.

But for your mom, take it back and get a USB attached drive if all you wanted to do was add a drive to the existing PC. It's simpler to use. A USB 2 drive (the cheaper ones) run at 20-30 MB/sec. If both your PC and the USB drive are USB3 (unlikely) then you can run up to drive speed (maybe 50-100 MB/sec).

---

Now for the "dongle" question. "will it work with a tv if we put a dongle into it". Not sure what you mean.

If you have a TV that can display media files from a NAS drive then yes it will work. You connect the NAS drive to the network as above and conncet the TV tot he network however the TV connects. Nto sure what dongle you'd need.

If you have a cable box that can store recorded shows on a USB drive then the NAS drive will not work for that.

IF you are getting a dongle for your PC that acts as a TV tuner then yes this drive will work. The Dongle goes in the PC, the applicaiton on the PC that is acting as your TV recorder needs to be told where to save the shows. Since you've mapped the NAS drive as a disk it will store there. A USB drive would work just as well for this, maybe better.

 

[luis94uk]

Hi,

This type of NAS drive is typically attached to your local network safely behind the firewall.

Virgin Media probably gave you a router for your 10MB service. The router has some 100Mb or 1Gb ports. You plug the drive into the port with an ethernet cable that should have come with the drive. (100 Mb and 1 Gb ports look the same and negotiate, your drive will transfer at the highest speed of the port). ((Depending on how you set up security on the router you may need to enter a key and/or plug a MAC address into router -- this is not likely))

With 100Mb you are limited to 10MB (megabytes) a second. With 1Gb you are limited by drive in enclosure to about 20-30 MB/sec (NAS protocol) maybe higher. Upper limit is 100Mb/sec but you will not hit this.

You will need to map the NAS drive on yoyur mom's PC. The drive should come with instructions. Or google MAP NETWORK DRIVE.

Net: you can make this work. And it will not effect your connection speed.

But for your mom, take it back and get a USB attached drive if all you wanted to do was add a drive to the existing PC. It's simpler to use. A USB 2 drive (the cheaper ones) run at 20-30 MB/sec. If both your PC and the USB drive are USB3 (unlikely) then you can run up to drive speed (maybe 50-100 MB/sec).

---

Now for the "dongle" question. "will it work with a tv if we put a dongle into it". Not sure what you mean.

If you have a TV that can display media files from a NAS drive then yes it will work. You connect the NAS drive to the network as above and conncet the TV tot he network however the TV connects. Nto sure what dongle you'd need.

If you have a cable box that can store recorded shows on a USB drive then the NAS drive will not work for that.

IF you are getting a dongle for your PC that acts as a TV tuner then yes this drive will work. The Dongle goes in the PC, the applicaiton on the PC that is acting as your TV recorder needs to be told where to save the shows. Since you've mapped the NAS drive as a disk it will store there. A USB drive would work just as well for this, maybe better.

 

[luis94uk]

Thanks alot for the detailed reply , its appreciated

and by dongle pretty much plug it into a usb slot and it picks up the wi-fi from our router

 

[tsnor]

...and by dongle pretty much plug it into a usb slot and it picks up the wi-fi from our router

Got it. The dongle is USB wireless connectivity.


If you hard wire (cat 5/6 ethernet cable) connect the drive to your router you will get better results.

If you are streaming wireless to the router and then wireless from the router to the disk you are making two wireless hops. This uses up the available bandwidth. (I've also had bad results trying to do this until I got a simultaneous dual band router to put each hop on a different frequency).

With the hard wired connection there is no interference with other wireless traffic.

 

[luis94uk]

Thanks for the help . after talking it through we have decided it would be more beneficial to everyone to get a refund and purchase a proper external hard-drive. instead of a network one which was mistakenly bought