Tech bytes for tea?

Western Digital offers an easy way to set up a personal private cloud to share documents and media – using the WD My Book Live network drive and mobile apps for Android and iOS smart phones and tablets.

The drives comes in 1TB (S$209), 2TB (S$239), and 3TB (S$299) capacities and are priced roughly US$50 more than non-network external drives with the same capacity.

I’d posted not long ago about setting up a home shared network hard drive in order to share documents and media – photos, music and video – in a private personal cloud in the comfort of the home.

That was followed with a case study of setting up and using the Seagate GoFlex Home storage system – a similar network attached storage (NAS) drive.

My Book Live is a network attached storage drive from Western Digital

The WD My Book Live network drive from Western Digital is also connected directly to the wireless router to plug into the home wireless network. Both Macs and PCs can store, access and share documents, as well as stream media from the drive.

With all the buzz about consumer public clouds and enterprise private and hybrid (private/public) clouds, the WD My Book Live makes it simple to set up your personal private cloud with the hard-disk and data physically sitting in the security of your home.

Access to this personal cloud can be extended beyond the home to the Internet. Any computer given the access rights can access the shared documents and media on the WD My Book Live through www.WD2go.com.

My Book Live comes in capacities of 1TB, 2TB and 3TB

In addition, Android and iOS mobile devices (both smart phones and tablets) can get mobile access to the files stored on the drive via the WD2go apps from Western Digital. The WD Photos and basic WD2go app are free and allows viewing files and streaming media from the WD My Book Live.

For US$2.99, the WD2g Pro app adds the ability to “clip” files – basically download a local copy of files and media to the mobile device; and allow users to share files by emailing either a copy of the files or a link to the WD My Book Live.

Note that once the link is sent out, anybody with the link will have access to that file. There is no expiry date for the sharing, like in Seagate’s GoFlex Home. The only way to stop sharing that file is to either remove that file or rename it – but that affects everybody to whom you’ve sent that link to.

Naturally, both the network drive and the router must be connected and powered up for access. And access from mobile devices is only via the apps over the Internet – instead of direct access over the local home wireless network.

That means that even if you’re at home, the app in your smart phone or tablet will still have to go to the Internet (via wireless or 3G) and come back into the home wireless network to access the files on the WD My Book Live. This is similar to the GoFlex Home.

But Western Digital does not limit the number of users or computers that can share the WD My Book Live. The GoFlex Home limits the number of users/computers that can be set up to connect with it to just 5. GoFlex Home customers need to subscribe to pay to enjoy unlimited connections.

WD My Book Live features a built-in media server that streams music, photos and movies to any DLNA-certified multimedia device such as a WD TV Live network media player, Blu-ray Disc player, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and connected TV.

My Book Live comes in capacities of 1TB, 2TB and 3TB and is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS, as well as DLNA/UPnP enabled devices.