The Net Codger is mad as hell! For years Western Digital has been selling a tiny network attached hard drive called the My Book which I’ve duly ignored. “Cheap consumer stuff, bah!” Well, last week I purchased one, the Western Digital My Book Live 2 TB drive, and put it through its paces. Why didn’t anyone tell me that, for years, I had been ignoring a true gem? Why didn’t anyone tell me how fantastic this little drive is?
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http://netcodger.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/the-awesome-little-western-digital-my-book-live/As I may have told you, I purchased one of these myself (3tb version, only $182) a few weeks back. He's right - it's fabulous. Integration into Windows is a snap, the provided software mapping folders on the NAS to drive letters on the Windows computer. Not being a Linux guru, Linux was a a bit more difficult, as there is no explicit support and I was pretty much on my own. After much experimentation and research, it amounted to editing a couple of files.
First, to tell the system about the NAS, I added this to /etc/fstab:
# Entries for MyBookLive :
//<IP address of MyBookLive>/Public /home/<user name>/<chosen mount name> cifs username=<MyBookLive user name>,password=<MyBookLive user password>,uid=<Linux user name>,defaults 0 0
//<IP address of MyBookLive>/<user folder> /home/<user name>/<chosen mount name> cifs username=<MyBookLive user name>,password=<MyBookLive user password>,uid=<Linux user name>,defaults 0 0
But they didn't auto-mount, and, although it may be possible to add that to fstab, I chose another, simpler method I already knew, adding this to /etc/rc.local:
# Force mounting of the NAS folders.
mount //<IP address of MyBookLive>/Public
mount //<IP address of MyBookLive>/<user folder>
So now, I expect several of the guru's to jump in and tell me of a simpler or more efficient way. Please do, I'll be glad to try out anything you come up with.
I suppose you could use a name as well as an IP address. I may experiment with that later. Anyway, it works like a champ. The only disappointment might be the speed of the transfers, but that may not be entirely the drives fault, since I'm doing everything over wi-fi.
Another plus is the free Western Digital apps for my iPhone, Android tablet and netbook. I can view (and show off) any of my thousands of digital photos anywhere I can get an internet connection. And listen to any of my ripped CDs, if I wanted to, but I don't do that when I'm out and about.
