Talk:Western Digital My Book

still in the process of formatting this page properly
I am still in the process of formatting this page properly (as you can see many of my formatting pragmas did not work correctly). This is my first Wikipedia page (although I commonly write TWikis for my company), hence I am still picking up the basic formatting commands.

I don't believe I have violated any WP rules by creating this article and I believe it is useful to have, since there are probably other people out there wondering what the Morse Code on their WD MyBook drive says. Since I bothered to translate it, I figured I would put it on WP for everyone else.

-d

I appreciate your creation of this page. I actually found it in search for the Morse Code translation! :-)

One thing though, I'm pretty should it should all be "My Book" instead of one word: "MyBook"

Kjkjava 06:27, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I successfully unlocked the WD World Edition drive and have access to the linux command line as root. Quite a funny system, running BusyBox and all. I made some pictures of the internals as well, if people want to see then I can post them onto this page.

Mhoiting 15:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I also unlocked it as well. Maybe it would be a nice idea to post a howto for this process. (Remove the HD, attach it to a linux box, remove the root password and enable the ssh client). Would this break any laws? Maybe someone could also post how to engage the nfs demon. I couldn't manage to do this yet.

Rh42 11:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I doubt it would break any laws, but it wouldn't be relevant to wikipedia. Try wikibooks for that sort of thing. Cheers, Localzuk(talk) 16:17, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Is the max data transfer rate the only difference between the My Book Studio (480 Mbps) and My Book Studio LX (800 Mbps), as reported by their spec sheets, all other components being the same? Eric3K (talk) 12:24, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Moved
I have moved the page from MyBook to Western Digital My Book in order to present the product's correct name and show the manufacturer (in a similar light to articles about other hardware). I have also added an 'extra usage' link at the top of My Book pointing to this article.

I am going to have a look through the rest of the article and do a bit of tidying also.-Localzuk(talk) 16:30, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Removing the speculation on the cypher in the Morse Code sounds good, but why remove the entire translation? The translation per-se doesn't really fall under WP:OR, and the formatting in the translation shows where the letters in the Morse code fall on the case. --Kbs 03:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The reason would be that it is not encyclopedic.-Localzuk(talk) 16:12, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Hm. Providing the exact translation of the code might be more encyclopedic (and more precise) than "made up of a selection of the words 'personal', 'reliable', 'innovative', 'simple', and 'design'". Nevertheless, let me just put the copy of the translation here rather than in the main article so someone who wants details can find the information easier. The line breaks correspond to the lines in the My Book Pro Edition case. Cheers, --Kbs 03:05, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

PERSONAL RELI ABLE INNOVATEVE SIMPLE INNOVA TIVE PERSONAL D ESIGN RELIABLE INNOVATI VE DESIGN PERSONAL DES IGN SIMPLE INNOVATIV


 * The reason it isn't encyclopedic is the exact layout is unimportant. It makes no difference to the words that are on the thing. It also isn't interesting knowing that the first 'reliable' is cut in 2. That is why I don't think it is encyclopedic whereas simply writing that it has these words in morse code on it is.-Localzuk(talk) 07:37, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Howto
I would love to see a howto on the unlock process. Thobruk 16:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * That wouldn't be encyclopedic, as Wikipedia isn't a howto site.-Localzuk(talk) 16:12, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure why you are unwilling to be "encyclopedic" in an encyclopedia, but whatever - it's your posting. Could one of the other posters give me a clue or give a link to a page with the howto in it. I would be quite happy to post the details in my blog if someone would email me the info. I have spent some time researching this and could not find anywhere else the process is described.

Thobruk 16:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Apologies. I read your response wrong. I appreciate your point that this is not a how-to site. However your other 2 posters there are the only people I know of that have been successful in this endeavour and I would like to get the information from them somehow. My email address is 29morons@gmail.com.

Thobruk 16:54, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Mybook Tech Difficulties
There are alot of technical difficulties with the mybooks. For example a decent majority of mybooks become corrupted after a certain number of months. This was told to me by a representitive when i spoke to their tech support. Check up on it tho.
 * Sorry that would be original research without a reliable source reporting on it.-Localzuk(talk) 20:43, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Many of them stop working after a week, and they charge you upwards of $500 to recover the data - all they ever do is swap your broken MyBook for a new one, so you lose all your data unless you're willing to pay big money first, despite it being simple to take the case off and connect the drive directly to any computer via a SATA cable and recover all the data yourself. And their tech support is rubbish.  And their online help is terrible, and their customer service ethos is diabolical - the website claims all email requests for assistance will be responded to within a day but if it takes more than that one day then you may well be waiting a month (once you're over that 24 hour target, you've already breached the waiting time so they no longer want to get back to you, as responding to your claim will then be a closed call that took more than 24 hours, which would adversly affect their targets - they instead wait for you to contact them again at which point they can reset the clock. But I don't have a reliable source to put in the article about how shitty they are (and I'm probably too biased against WD to be willing to edit any articles about them). Neıl  ☎  10:22, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Another thing to mention is that it's very difficult to replace the internal drive. After struggling to get the case open, most hard disks just won't work with the shipped controller. You have to replace the drive with (almost) exactly the same model for it to work (at least for the WD5000H1Q and WD10000H1CS). On top of that, you won't find any information about compatibility on WD's website. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.80.226.2 (talk) 13:35, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

The WD GreenPower Series HDD used in many of these enclosures have problems that can be proven by many Information pages. They have a default setting, that parks the head (these drives have a parking position on a piece of plastic off the platters), called "head unload", after only a few seconds without access. The devices are only made for an average of about 300,000 Head unloads, which can be reached in a few months, if there often is access just after the parking took place. I had a few GP devices die due to excessive head unloading, but outside of the MyBook Series. On my MyBook Live, I disabled head parking and have had no reliability issues. 84.134.117.171 (talk) 15:22, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

NAS
The article says that the MyBook is an external harddrive, but isn't the World Edition a NAS? --Jambalaya 23:38, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes its a NAS. Its got an ethernet interface and its USB connection isn't mass storage compatible and is only good for expanding storage.


 * I don't quite understand that. When I first bought a My Book all I wanted was a big external drive, any big external drive.  I didn't know there were varieties of My Books, I thought the names probably referred to drive size, speed, cache, and so on.  I bought one (Still have no idea what flavour it is, it doesn't say anywhere on it) because at the time half a TB was massive, and it was comparatively cheap.  I unpacked it, plugged it into my Linux box via ethernet, reformatted it, and I'm now using it as an extension drive.


 * Are you saying that if it had been a World edition (Which I assume it isn't) I wouldn't have been able to do that? --Deke42 (talk) 10:41, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Possible harm using php ssh hack listed in Resources
There is a link listed under Resources which goes to an ssh hack via php at martin.hinner.info. People should be warned that this php script could be used by the creator to make a backdoor to your My Book World and allow unauthorized access to your data. I have emailed Martin Hinner and requested the source code to his php hack but have not received a response. I recommend people do not use this until we have seen the source code. If you must gain ssh access remove the drives from the my book and put them in your PC. Boot a linux live cd and make the changes that way. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Spikesnet (talk • contribs).
 * I think that, rather than adding a warning, we should remove the reference to that site.-Localzuk(talk) 16:55, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Martin Hinner (author of the hack mentioned above): I have posted the source code. Sorry for not replying to your e-mail, I am quite busy ... 81.201.62.154 (talk)

Errors
I have just corrected the eSATA connection data rate (GB/s => Gb/s). I think, but I'm not sure, that the "256 Megabit" DDR chip on The World Edition needs to be changed to "256 megabyte" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.231.144.126 (talk) 14:47, 2 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The device doesn't have that much memory:


 * Luteijn (talk) 10:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

The World Edition stuff is out of date - the drm seems to have gone —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.167.202.230 (talk) 03:56, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

No mention of Mirror Edition
Why no mention of the RAID Mirror Edition? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.174.171.21 (talk) 13:07, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Wrong section on limited network speed
The section on limited network speed of the Word Edition is rubbish and should be taken out. While I'm writing this, I'm copying data from my WD World Edition (newest firmware version) onto my local HD with about 20,000 KByte/s = 160 MBit/s over a GBit network.

The reference for this section is quite dubious, anyway. 84.56.223.140 (talk) 00:33, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * While I agree the reference can be improved, it is true that the transfer speed is tied to the CPU clock speed, which works out to be significantly slower than the network speed and HDD speed of the device. I recall official sources explaining this issue on a FAQ page or something.  If they've figured out a workaround on a more recent firmware update, then a resource for this would also need to be uncovered. -Verdatum (talk) 16:58, 4 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The article makes a (now?) untrue statement, namely that WD advertises a GBit network connection while the overall speed of the device doesn't exceed 100 MBit/s anyway. Since this statement is false it should just be left out of the article. I don't know about the speed with earlier firmware versions and if they were slower, so I don't see a point in providing a resource for that.


 * Here are some tests that find similar speeds as I found with my drive:


 * http://www.legitreviews.com/article/998/8/
 * http://www.desktopreview.com/default.asp?newsID=708&Review=Western+Digital+My+Book+World+Edition+II
 * http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/02/18/review_storage_network_wd_my_book_world_edition/page4.html


 * 84.56.223.140 (talk) 20:32, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

AC Power Adapters
This is a very informational wikipedia entry, and gave me some good info I was looking for. It would have been even more helpful if information about the AC adapters were included for the various models, what the amp/volt ratings are, types on plug/connectors used, etc. 182.171.37.110 (talk) 04:48, 28 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I've owned about 12 of these over the past 4 years. Every model features the same 12V 1.5A DC cylindrical connector that fits many many other brands of external enclosures. (EIAJ-04?) --70.167.58.6 (talk) 02:18, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Fourteen-segment display
To any Western Digital engineer or homebrew hacker reading this, please do away with the 9 surface mounted Leds mounted in a nonsense pattern, and replace it with a much cheaper to implement and more useful off the shelf Seven-segment display or even better, Fourteen-segment display. You could still do the the spinning display when the drive is in use, and best of all, output capacity used, read/write speed, status and error messages in plain text, and a 'Western Digital', 'Hello', or 'Bye' message when shut down. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.226.11.248 (talk) 14:26, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

MyBook Live technical Data corrected
The Applied Micro APM82181 is shipped in two variants: 800MHz and 1GHz. Some tech pages state the higher clock rate under "technical data" for these devices, but the MyBook Live (all variants) uses the 800MHz variant:

U-Boot 2009.08 (Sep 02 2010 - 21:48:57), Build: 0.2.3

CPU:  AMCC PowerPC APM82181 Rev. D at 800 MHz (PLB=200, OPB=100, EBC=100 MHz)


 * Security support


 * Bootstrap Option E - Boot ROM Location NOR/SRAM (8 bits)


 * 32 kB I-Cache 32 kB D-Cache

Board: Apollo-3G - APM82181 Board, 2*SATA, 1*USB

I2C:  ready

DRAM: Auto calibration 256 MB

FLASH: 512 kB

MyBookLive:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor      : 0

cpu            : APM82181

clock          : 800.000008MHz

Memory         : 256 MB

I corrected the information accordingly! 84.134.117.171 (talk) 15:31, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Proprietary format
Some WB MyBooks have a non-standard format used on the disk. While they look "normal" when plugged in with the USB connector, if you remove the drive from the case and plug it into a computer using a SATA cable, the drive cannot be read. If you look at it with a disk utility (e.g. Disks in Ubuntu) it shows an unknown format. This makes for difficult data recovery in the event of a failure of the USB portion of the device.

If someone knows more about which models are so designed, perhaps this should be mentioned in the article.99.245.247.240 (talk) 06:45, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Western Digital My Book. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100505043631/http://www.wdc.com:80/en/products/productcatalog.asp?t=2 to http://www.wdc.com/en/products/productcatalog.asp?t=2

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 04:38, 16 January 2016 (UTC)