Western Digital My Book

[socomrod]

Anybody know if this snazzy little unit would be compatible with LMCE? It holds 1 TB of data, and it is dirt cheap! From what I can find though, there are no drivers for it, and Windows is able to detect it automatically. I also don't see anything that indicates that Windows is able to use it to directly play media files from. It might be usable only as a backup....still though...that is a HUGE drive!

[JimmyGosling]

I have one of these, but I have not been able to get it it work with the system yet. 
First off, I'm still using Pluto.  I'm going to be making the switch soon, but one of my key objectives it to have this NAS working for me.  Hopefully that does not put up a large wall with any help anyone can supply.

My issue is in the fact that it's simply not being picked up by the core.  Usually when I have something plugged in on the network it shows up on my MD and notifies me that I have a new storage device.  Not the case here.  I get an IP, but that's it.  How can I force the Core to recognize this?

The NAS itself is pretty decent.  I've played around with the settings a little bit to give it some more memory toward network bandwidth and increased that transfer rate by about (guessing) 25%.

There is also a short tutorial on how to give the book ssh access which I found helpful
http://martin.hinner.info/mybook/sshaccess.php

[JimmyGosling]

Alright, so it's been awhile since  last put in on this.  The WorldBook is still working, but unfortunatly not as well as I would hope.  I'm not sure why...yet, but while on LinuxMCE's network it seems to have some sort of hard cut off after which it is completely unresponsive and needs to be reset.
I've watched a couple of movies off of it with mixed results.  Again, I'm not sure if it's related, but halfway through some movies it will simply quit out claiming that the disk (in this case the WorldBook) is unreadable.  The drive is still accessible though (which is why I think it might be unrelated).
The unresponsive state comes when I've been transferring files to (never from) the drive via the network.  It will happen both with one large file (an ISO for example) or several small files (MP3s for example).

[geoffrey]

if we are talking about the same thing

( http://www.wdmybook.com/en/index.asp )

then when I plugged my 500GB version into the USB port on my core LMCE recognized it immediately.  Although, it saw it as an internal hdd.

but no problems at all using it.

[JimmyGosling]

Yep, that's the same thing I'm talking about.  Have you tried any large data transfers with it yet?

[geoffrey]

No, I have not.  Although, I use it all the time to watch movies on my Mac.  So the device itself has no difficulties with streaming large files for playback.

do you have it connected directly to the USB port or networked somehow?

the reason I ask is that I have had some funky results tranferring large files (or several smaller ones) via the network.

often times when I transfer, for example, an album of mp3 tracks, four or five files (from 12-15) simply get dropped.  no warnings or errors, they just aren't there.

so perhaps we are having a network problem and not a WD harddrive problem.

[JimmyGosling]

I have used it exclusively via a network connection.  It's on the same gigabit switch with the DCE Router.
Like you I usually watch movies off of it (no problem there).  It's when I'm writing files to it. 
Never without a status.  I'm going to try using the USB cable though and see if that makes a difference.

[JimmyGosling]

A long overdue update on this.  It appears that the issue belongs to the network, or perhaps the amount of activity it gets while it's on the DCE's network.  When I took it off, and put it on a network containing only my laptop and itself, it ran great and I was able to more hundreds of gigs worth of data continuously without the repeated interruptions I would see in it's usual situation.

It's not a major concern to me, and so I won't go too much further down the route of finding the explanation as it works fine when I want to watch something off of the drive, and currently there is no available capacity left on the device.

[tthaulow]

Hi

I had the same problem about 6 months ago. My WD MyBook Word edition (NAS) had to be manually rebooted all the time. It seemed to just disappear from my network. It was so annoying that I uninstalled LMCE and installed Mythbuntu instead. After that, the drive has worked perfect.

BUT, I would rather use LMCE on my system and want to give it another try. In the meantime I have disabled MioNet and enabled SSH   access on the device ( http://martin.hinner.info/mybook/sshaccess.php ). Don't know if it matters, my linux knowledge is rather basic.

Thomas T.

[JimmyGosling]

I did some of these same things you were talking about as well (usign the same tutorial in fact).  The worldbook doesn't have a great deal of memory on it (about 30mb or so) and I think this is part of the issue.  You can turn off mionet which gets you a little extra, and you can turn off some of the processes still running around mionet manually (there are still additional ones running I'm pretty sure) but you risk bricking the box by doing that.

So it would seem you can make a little more of if, but it's never going to make an idea candidate for the LinuxMCE network imho.

[geoffrey]

why wouldn't you just plug it into the core and use it as a USB drive, you should still have access to all the media at any MD, right?

[JimmyGosling]

I could, however my core has one of those odd issues where it refuses to boot into the correct screen unless I have all USB devices unplugged.

I have not had any success hooking the device up via USB in either linux or windows.  Anything special I should be doing/setting up?

[tthaulow]

why wouldn't you just plug it into the core and use it as a USB drive, you should still have access to all the media at any MD, right?

How will you be be able to do that? The WD world edition is a NAS with Ethernet connection, not an external USB-drive. The USB-interface (the flat type connector, not the square) is for drive expansion only according to the manual. Is there a way to hack it?

T.

[JimmyGosling]

It may depend on the edition that you have.

[skeptic]

I'm using a WD essential edition, connected as a USB drive (only option) and it works great.  No overheating issues, plenty fast, and for ~$175 after tax for the 750G version it's well worth the money.  I did reformat it as ext3 first thing.