WD My Book Live 3TB Personal Cloud Storage NAS Share Files and Photos

Yes, this thing is just a big hard drive with a NAS interface. But it has that magic that is manufacturer support behind it that makes it truly something special.WD has basically poured their hearts and souls into delivering tremendous customer value not in just storage (I bought the 3TB and am ecstatic for the price), but in SOFTWARE.Software - that thing that automates so much, does so much, makes SO much possible (and so easy) when done RIGHT.Fortunately (for the most part), the WD 2GO software (available for iPhone and Android as well as having similarly simple online or direct LAN connection options as well) is just phenomenal.It is apparently a full Linux install of some kind or other, and SSH is included...thus allowing the addition of things like bittorrent clients RIGHT on the device, etc. I hear some are successfully doing this, and bravo to that.The iPhone app is great. The only limitation to it is that I am seeing that it relies upon the iPhone's native abilities to play the media files you pull down from your "personal cloud"...in other words, an mp4 video will play, while many AVI videos currently will not.WD will HAVE to fix this part of it in order to keep this shining halo of a reputation going. A small investment in software will yield them big results in sales. This is like the Macintosh of NAS drives at the moment, tremendously easy to use, a nearly friction free user experience (they even make accessing your files on your smartphone far easier than it had to be) and just brilliant.I am excited for a true "universal" media solution...in other words, play my AVI files, play my FLAC files (it plays ALAC fine, since the iPhone/iPod plays ALAC, but I have many files in FLAC and don't want to have to go through conversion with them.Now I am able to listen to the same music on my iPhone in the car (streaming it), streaming to my Wii at home with WiiMC on the homebrew channel, on my computer and get my files (if needed) from a public computer.This device is definitely one of those "cry only once" kind of purchases. If you are tired (like I was) of having to delete movies you'd downloaded and liked to make room for the next batch, this is a great media storage solution that is 50% more flexible and valuable than you think it is.--EDIT: Oh man, the BitTorrent downloader app is UH-mAY-ZING. I am head-over-heels with this thing. Check out what I can do:- 3 o'clock at the office (where obviously I can't download torrents), I get the idea that I'd like to watch Movie-X tonight. Well, I go onto a torrent site, copy the link address to the .torrent file, paste it into the apps built-in downloader, it downloads the file and then happily chugs along for the next couple of hours in my kitchen closet, downloading movies to my NAS device. After dinner, it is ready to watch on my Wii with WiiMC.- I am at a stoplight and would like to listen to ALBUM-Y tonight in lossless (and larger-to-download) FLAC format, but don't have it in my collection. On my iPhone, I find a torrent site and press and hold the link until it gives me the link menu. I select Copy. Then I open the web-based Transmission torrent client on my iPhone, which displays BEAUTIFULLY and works 100%. I click "Open," paste the link into the little upload box, click Start and right from my phone, I just started a torrent downloading at home. I get home and enjoy the music immediately with no wait.This setup is just brilliant for us.

I was concerned reading the reviews on this product... how can there be so many 5 star and 1 star ratings?? Oh, I know... buyers might not understand what this is. I read one review where someone complained they could only access via their network! No kidding, the name of the product is NAS. Network accessible Storage! Others complain the speed is slow when accessing their files from the Internet. No kidding people... maybe the internet connection you were using was SLOW. If your have an older 100mb network ITS YOUR NETWORK THATS SLOW! 100mb network = about 10MB/second at best. If your copying files from your wireless device MAYBE YOUR WIRELESS IS SLOW.This is my second one I purchased as the first one is now almost full. Disk space is disk space..... but the software that comes with this device makes it perfect for me as BOTH a backup device and a file server.Here is a tip for anyone interested..... I use it to back up my digital media collection of home movies, pictures, mp3's etc from multiple PC's.....if one of my PC's ever crashes, I have a copy of that data. The bonus is that I share out that backup copy and now the backup data is used as my media server for all my devices! Such as my Smart TV, WDTV media player, MINIX Neo media player with XBMC, Windows Media Center, my smart phone or whatever.I'm in IT for 30 years and handled 1000's of different components and software... it's nice to open this up, plug it in get it 100% functional in 5 minutes without having to look at any documentation... the terminology used is perfectly in line with industry standards. If it's confusing for you, then you shouldn't be buying this type of equipment.Performs very well.... On my Gigabit network, the Read speeds are good ranging 70-90 Mbytes/second for large file copies to my PC's ( depending on the PC) Write speeds not as fast... get about 30-40 Mbytes/second for large file copies. Obviously there are devices that would outperform this, but were talking $200 or less for this device.For me the best features are...- easy setup - great features - low price- fast Read speeds- has a sleep mode so 100% quiet when in sleep mode- quiet hum when it is operational ... no significant clicking when accessing data!- Looks great.. It does look like a book on my bookshelf- Green LED is not overpowering like on some devices ..sounds goofy but some LED's light up the room