To temporarily sate our family’s ever-increasing need for digital storage, we recently purchased Western Digital’s MyBook Live, the 2 terabyte variety. Incidentally, I remember when we got the Wife’s first computer about 10 years ago and I outfitted with a “massive” 100 gigabyte hard drive and told her “I don’t think we’ll ever fill that up.” When we did fill that up, we purchased a 500 gig drive and I made the same comment. Now we’re purchasing terabyte sized drives, and I’m not making that comment anymore.
Anyway, since it’s a recent purchase I can’t speak to the longevity of the product, but I can say that it’s very simple to use and setup. I didn’t bother with the device setup CD because all it does is discover the device on the network. Being the network admin around these parts, it took me all of 15 seconds to find the device and browse on over to the web based setup. I was able to assign it a static IP and create the new shares without too much problem. Although it did take a little long for the device to come available at the IP I assigned it. I had some shares setup a few minutes later and voila, I was backing stuff up onto the drive lickety-split.
But the ease of use isn’t what makes this product intriguing to me. Rather, the OS running under the hood is what made it intriguing. It’s running a version of Debian, Lenny to be specific. Further, it turns out that it’s quite straight forward to gain access to it’s innards. The device has an ssh server built into it that can be enabled via a hidden web page. Using ssh I can fine tune the device in anyway I see fit, including installing new packages to extend the devices functionality.
So I’ve unexpectedly come across a new toy. Should be interesting to see what else it can be made to do. Not a bad value for $150.