My Book is a series of

external hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magne ...

s produced by

Western Digital Western Digital Corporation (WDC, commonly known as Western Digital or WD) is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology produc ...

. There are currently nine series of My Book drives: ''Essential Edition'', ''Home Edition'', ''Office Edition'', ''Mirror Edition'', ''Studio Edition'', ''Premium Edition'', ''Elite Edition'', ''Pro Edition'', ''AV Dvr'' "Live Edition", and the ''World Edition''. My Book drives are designed to look like a standard black

hardback book A hardcover, hard cover, or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as case-bound) book is one bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder's board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other cloth, heavy paper, or occa ...

, with the exception of the Pro/Studio series, which are silver, and the World series, which are white. Other than the book-like appearance of the drive's case, My Book drives originally featured vent holes on the top of the drives which spelled out a message in Morse code.

Models

Essential Edition

In addition to the book-like design, the ''My Book Essential Edition'' drives have an ''Intelligent

Power Management Power management is a feature of some electrical appliances, especially copiers, computers, computer CPUs, computer GPUs and computer peripherals such as monitors and printers, that turns off the power or switches the system to a low-power st ...

'' feature that stops the drive platters after ten minutes of inactivity, rather than the usual expedient of slowing them down. The unit also turns on and off with the computer it is attached to. Essential Edition My Book drives are almost entirely black, with the exception of a single blue light, used to indicate power and activity, or a circular green light that is located on the front of the drive. The older model has a white light. "Essential Edition" drives used USB 2.0 for connectivity are available in capacities of 80 GB, 160 GB, 250 GB, 320 GB, 400 GB, 500 GB and 750 GB.

Premium Edition

''Premium Edition'' drives are similar to the ''Essential Edition'' model but also include FireWire 400 ports, an integrated visual capacity gauge and Western Digital backup software. ''Premium Edition'' My Book drives have the same black case as ''Essential Edition'' drives; however, the light surrounding the power button is blue. Also, inside the standard blue light is another blue ring light that contains eight individual segments which indicate the remaining space on the drive. This edition is available with storage capacities of 160 GB, 250 GB, 320 GB, 400 GB, and 750 GB.

Pro Edition

The ''Pro Edition My Books'' contain all of the features of the ''Premium Edition'' ones, but with added FireWire 800 connectivity for fast data transfer. In addition, the ''Pro Edition My Books'' replaced the Western Digital backup software found on the ''Premium Editions'' with EMC Retrospect Express backup and recovery software. ''Pro Edition My Book'' drives have the same basic case design as ''Premium Edition'' drives; however, the case is silver rather than black. In addition, it includes a circular blue capacity gauge LED divided into six segments (representing 17% of usage per segment) and an outer ring that represents drive activity. The ''Pro Edition My Book'' is marketed as a

RAID Raid, RAID or Raids may refer to: Attack * Raid (military), a sudden attack behind the enemy's lines without the intention of holding ground * Corporate raid, a type of hostile takeover in business * Panty raid, a prankish raid by male college ...

solution that can be used as a backup device.

Pro Edition II

This edition was available with storage capacities of 500 GB, 640 GB, 1 TB, 1.5 TB, and 2 TB.

Premium Edition II

This edition is black and was available with storage capacities of 500 GB, 640 GB, 1 TB, 1.5 TB, and 2 TB.

World Edition

The ''World Edition My Books'' function as

network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term "NAS" can refer to both the tech ...

(NAS), by way of an

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...

interface. They also feature an extra USB host port to allow an additional USB drive to be daisy chained. Data on first generation (Blue Rings) My Book World is accessed as

CIFS Server Message Block (SMB) is a communication protocol originally developed in 1983 by Barry A. Feigenbaum at IBM and intended to provide shared access to files and printers across nodes on a network of systems running IBM's OS/2. It also provide ...

/ SMB shared folders. The second generation (White Lights) expands the access choices to include NFS, FTP, an iTunes server, and a Twonky media server. In addition, the World Edition uses WD Anywhere Access to gain remote access to the drive via the Internet. It has the same basic case design as the ''Premium Edition'' drives, including the capacity gauge, except the color of the ''World Edition'' is white. It has the same Morse code ventilation as the other editions.

Network speed

Although My Book Ethernet-capable disks come with a Gigabit Ethernet interface, the network speed is significantly slower. Especially for older "blue rings" models (200 MHz ARM CPU and 32 MiB RAM), where it varies between 3–6 MB/s, with an average of 4.5 MB/s. The newer "white lights" My Book World Edition 1 TB and 2 TB storage capacity models, WDH1NC and WDH2NC (oxnas810, 380 MHz ARM CPU and 128 MiB RAM), have drive speeds comparable to USB, at about 10 MB/s write and 25 MB/s read. The "white lights" WDH1NC is jumbo frames capable and can achieve ~36 MB/s reading and ~18 MB/s writing speed over Gigabit Ethernet.

Internals

This drive runs

BusyBox BusyBox is a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, and FreeBSD, although many of the tools it provides are designed to work with in ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

on an Oxford Semiconductor 0XE800

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between th ...

chip which has the ARM926EJ-S core. In addition it uses a VIA Cicada Simpliphy vt6122 Gigabit Ethernet chipset, and a

Hynix SK hynix Inc. is a South Korean supplier of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) chips and flash memory chips. Hynix is the world's second-largest memory chipmaker (after Samsung Electronics) and the world's third-largest semiconductor company. ...

32 Mbit DDR Synchronous DRAM chip. The webserver is the mini_http server, although older "bluerings" use

Lighttpd lighttpd (pronounced "lighty") is an open-source web server optimized for speed-critical environments while remaining standards-compliant, secure and flexible. It was originally written by Jan Kneschke as a proof-of-concept of the c10k problem � ...

. The drives of the ''World Edition'' are

xfs XFS is a high-performance 64-bit journaling file system created by Silicon Graphics, Inc (SGI) in 1993. It was the default file system in SGI's IRIX operating system starting with its version 5.3. XFS was ported to the Linux kernel in 2001; as ...

ext3 ext3, or third extended filesystem, is a journaled file system that is commonly used by the Linux kernel. It used to be the default file system for many popular Linux distributions. Stephen Tweedie first revealed that he was working on ext ...

formatted, which means that the drive can be mounted as a standard drive from within Linux if removed from the casing and installed in a normal PC. With both sets of commands a utility such as Gparted can be used to determine which paths are relevant for a given setup.Multiple authors (2008-09-19). How To Recover Data From WD My Book World Edition NAS Device. Hacking WD MyBook World Ed, 19 September 2008. Retrieved from http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/forum/t-90514/how-to-recover-data-from-wd-my-book-world-edition-nas-device.

Extending capabilities

The device can be 'unlocked' and accessed via

SSH The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution. SSH applications are based on ...

terminal (newer versions of WDH1NC10000 do not need to be "unlocked"
MBWE SSH Access
, meaning that the WD MioNet Java-based software can be disabled so the device can be run with an unrestricted Linux OS, at the cost of voiding the

warranty In contract law, a warranty is a promise which is not a condition of the contract or an innominate term: (1) it is a term "not going to the root of the contract",Hogg M. (2011). ''Promises and Contract Law: Comparative Perspectives''p. 48 Cambri ...

. The unlocking makes it possible to install other software on My Book. For example, the user can run a different web server or an ftp server (such as vsftpd) on it, use NFS for mounting shared directories natively from

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, an ...

, or install a

bitTorrent client The following is a general comparison of BitTorrent clients, which are computer programs designed for peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. The BitTorrent protocol coordinates segmented file transfer among peers connected ...

such as

rTorrent rTorrent is a text-based BitTorrent client written in C++, based on the ncurses and libTorrent (not to be confused with libtorrent) libraries for Unix, whose author's goal is "a focus on high performance and good code". Technical detail ...

Premium ES Edition

''My Book Premium ES Edition'' drives are nearly identical to their ''Premium Edition'' counterparts, the only difference being that the ''ES'' line features a single

eSATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard t ...

connection instead of the dual FireWire 400 ports present on the ''Premium Edition'', allowing computers with available eSATA ports to transfer data at speeds of up to 3 Gbit/s. This edition is available in 320 GB and 500 GB capacities.

Mirror Edition

This edition was available with storage capacities of 1 TB and 2 TB.

My Book for Mac

This edition was available with storage capacities of 2 TB, 3 TB, 4 TB, 6 TB and 8 TB.

Essential

This edition was available with storage capacities of 500 GB, 640 GB, 1 TB, 1.5 TB, and 2 TB.

Studio

The ''My Book Studio Edition'' comes with quad interface: USB 2.0 / FireWire 400 / FireWire 800 and eSATA. It is marketed for use with Mac OS X. This edition is available with storage capacities of 1 TB, 1.5 TB and 2 TB. The current edition (as of November 2010) has two FireWire 800 ports and one USB 2.0 mini port. It comes pre-formatted as Mac OS X HFS+. The ''My Book Studio Edition II'' contains two drives and is designed to be used as a RAID system for increased performance. This edition is available with storage capacities of 1 TB, 2 TB, 4 TB and 6 TB. The two drives can be replaced by the user.

Live

In 2011, Western Digital released the My Book Live Edition NAS. They range in storage capacity from 1 to 3 TB. My Book Live uses Applied Micro APM82181 processor working at 800 MHz and has 256 MiB of RAM. Broadcom BCM54610 Ethernet interface is able to support 10/100/1000 Mbit/s connectivity. Contrary to previous versions, Live has no USB ports. Instead of a Linux-Kernel & Busybox found in previous versions, Live uses a full-featured

Debian GNU/Linux Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of Deb ...

Live Duo

My Book Live Duo was released in January 2012. It features two drives (totaling 6 or 4 TB, depending on the product version) that can be configured in a

array; in that case, all data is automatically mirrored and can be recovered if one of the drives fail (but effective drive space is halved). It sports a similar design to the previous My Book Live, but unlike that one this product has a top cover that allows for easy servicing and replacement of the drives. It also has one

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use ...

and one

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

connection.

AV DVR Expander

The ''My Book AV DVR Expander'' is intended to increase the disk capacity of consumer DVRs or compatible

camcorder A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-swa ...

s. It can also be used connected to a computer, if necessary. The Expander is available with a storage capacity of 1 TB. The DVR Expander was originally designed specifically for the

TiVo TiVo ( ) is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by Xperi (previously by TiVo Corporation and TiVo Inc.) and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose fea ...

series 3 and onwards and, at that time, the only connectivity was an

port. Recent versions come with a

USB 2.0 Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

connection, as well, and are compatible with

Direct TV DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. It ...

Dish TV Dish, dishes or DISH may refer to: Culinary * Dish (food), something prepared to be eaten * Dishware, plates and bowls for eating, cutting boards, silverware Communications * Dish antenna a type of antenna * Dish Network, a satellite televisio ...

, and the Pace, Time Warner and Scientific Atlanta brands of DVR.

My Cloud

In 2013,

My Cloud The My Cloud is a line of personal network-attached storage devices and multi-purpose servers designed and marketed by Western Digital Corporation (WD). My Cloud devices come in sizes of 2 terabytes, 3 terabytes, 4 terabytes, and 8 terabytes. A s ...

NAS Nas (born 1973) is the stage name of American rapper Nasir Jones. Nas, NaS, or NAS may also refer to: Aviation * Nasair, a low-cost airline carrier and subsidiary based in Eritrea * National Air Services, an airline in Saudi Arabia ** Nas Air ( ...

has been released by Western Digital. My Cloud uses a Mindspeed Comcerto 2000 (M86261G-12) dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 Communication Processor running at 650 MHz. The Gigabit Ethernet port is a Broadcom BCM54612E Gigabit Ethernet Transceiver. Other components include 256 MiB of Samsung K4B2G1646E DDR3 RAM and 512 KB of Winbound 25X40CL

flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid F ...

. The drive is a WD Red 2 TB (WD20EFRX). My Cloud relies on air convection for cooling, not a fan.

2021 data deletion

On 24 June 2021, users reported that their My Book drives had apparently been wiped the day before in a factory reset, perhaps via malware.

Morse code

The Morse code message written into the drive case is made up of a selection of the words "personal", "reliable", "innovative", "simple", and "design".

References

External links

Western Digital My Book
{{Western Digital Hard disk drives Linux-based devices Western Digital products