I bought the My Book Live to use with my Macintosh to load with photos that my family could access and download. Bad mistake! While all the advertisement indicates this is an easy solution, it is not. The java based interface on my Mac of Dashboard and on a Windows PC using WD2GO was sloppy at best. The last software update messed up Dashboard even more. Secondly the requirements don’t tell you that an upload speed of 1.5 Mb per second is pretty much useless.
My brother-in-law who is quite knowledgeable on Windows had a very hard time with WD2GO. We finally figured out the AT&T uVerse router configuration, no thanks to Western Digital, which provided no instructions for this major TV/internet provider. After getting it to work, sort of, we found it was very unstable and to slow to be useable. It is even unstable on my local network because while copying files to it, it will suddenly detach from the network with no warning.
And yes I contacted WD Support, multiple times, which was helpful and polite but could not solve the problem. They could only tell me it was operating like it was supposed to.
Unfortunately by this time it was to late to return the device for a full refund. I am very disappointed and will never buy another Western Digital My Book Live or similar.
By the way, I now use DropBox and have NO problems and neither does my family getting files.
Returning mine today ! Totally useless piece of equipment, crashes constantly and i even wasted money on Twonky server though I don’t know on how to use the ssh client how to install it …
Western Digital tech support called again and I finally got a tech that knew something. He reconfigured my setup using smb and for remote login used the software for My Book Cloud which does not use java.
So the My Book Live (MBL) is working finally after talking with tech support 3 or 4 times; I lost count. The network speed and stability is much improved. So far so good.
However, I must say if this MBL goes haywire again, then that’s it. I am going to rip it apart, yank out the hard drive, reformat, and put it in an enclosure. Sorry WD but the fight is just not worth it. You should not have to fight with a piece of hardware to get it working!
Also want to state in all fairness to WD their regular (non NAS) hard drives are fine. If fact, I just bought a new 2 TB USB 3 My Book for Mac. Plugged it in and it works. Period.
Usually, most issues are user related cause they want to use a NAS as an external USB hard drive. Functionality is a bit more complex than USB drives, There are permissions/networking/OS access/remote access/etc. Usually those with issues will have them with just about ANY NAS, not just WD’s. If we add the lack of knowledge of their own network/router/firewall/hardware/OS, well, you get my point.
There will be a learning curve, but once you understand/master it, it makes a word of a difference.
I do agree, NAS is not for everybody. If refund is out if the question, sell it, give it away to someone who is willing to learn and play with it, donate it, someone who want to learn Linux, etc.
Lucky for me my drive is only a month old and I will be taking it back for a full refund.
This product muct not be for sale as it is NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE.
Shout at WD **bleep** support and you shpuld get a refund…never buy WD again as you will soon be able to pick them up free from any dustbin
I strongly disagree, sure I had a bit of a rough patch myself last year with all the bad firmware updates with that one exception the My Book Live has greatly exceeded my expectations of it and is worth the money. Perhaps read the manual. WD technical support on the other hand is a completely different beast pun intended.
