Western Digital My Book Live

Overview

Presented in a sleek, tidy package and easy to use, WD misses a trick by not including USB port for quick access to content. Quiet, cool and relatively cheap for a Gigabit-equipped NAS, the obvious strength rests with remote access. All in all, a well-balanced centralised storage device that does a good job catering for the mainstream needs of Joe Average.

-- As reviewed by HEXUS.net

TechSpot Metascore

Based on 11 expert reviews

Excellent:

4
Good:

5
Average:

1
Bad:

1

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Last revision on June 25, 2021

Reviewers Liked

Great performance
Capacious single-drive model
Virtually silent
Low Power consumption
Easy to use, fast, and affordable
It also comes with mobile applications to share photos on the go

Reviewers Didn't Like

No USB or FireWire ports
Remote access app only supports JPEG files
Doesn't provide 100 MB/s reads
No NAS backup features
MioNet remote access solution is nearly useless

Competitors and Related Products

Our editors hand-pick related products using a variety of criteria: direct competitors targeting the same market segment, or devices that are similar in size, performance, or feature sets.

Expert reviews and ratings

100

That’s not to say that the My Book Live is perfect. There are no USB ports, so you can’t plug in another USB drive to add more storage, and it lacks the RAID capabilities of the Iomega and Freecom drives, so if you need those specific...

By Macworld Australia on November 08, 2011

By HEXUS.net on October 24, 2011

Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices are excellent for backing up your important digital files and folders, as well as sharing media between all computers and other media playing devices on your home network. Western Digital has a great reputation...

By TechRadar on August 19, 2011

The My Book Live is an incredibly easy to use network-attached storage device. If you’ve got a fast Internet connection or Ethernet hook-up, the My Book Live is an inexpensive and attractive choice for anyone who doesn’t want to deal with...

By Macworld on March 29, 2011

The Western Digital My Book Live is a fantastic network-attached storage device. It's fast, capacious and offers some very handy media...

By CNET UK on January 24, 2011

Basic but well thought-out and with plenty of storage, the MyBook Live is an ideal NAS for first-time users....

By Expert Reviews on January 05, 2011

This Western Digital drive makes it easy to test the NAS waters, offering gobs of storage, great performance, and Internet access for not much cash....

By PCWorld on November 05, 2010

The Western Digital MyBook Live is a fast, plug-and-play, simple-to-use home NAS server that unfortunately lacks features and has a subpar remote-access...

By cnet on October 18, 2010

The biggest buzz word in technology over the past year or two has been "cloud services" with a number of companies, including Apple, Microsoft and Google, all announcing options that allow us to store files onto a virtual drive that is available...

By Gadling on May 07, 2012

Western Digital is a brand known for setting standards in terms of external storage drives. From MyBook, over Elements, right to the Passport series, this manufacturer’s external disks have been much appreciated globally. A few years ago, WD...

By InsideHW on April 04, 2012

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Western Digital My Book Live

Overview

Pros & Cons

Reviews

Similar To

Price: $189

TechSpot Metascore

Reviewers Liked

Reviewers Didn't Like

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QNAP TS-251+

QNAP TS-453 Mini

WD My Cloud Mirror

Expert reviews and ratings