Western Digital WDG2NC20000N Hard Drive Review
November 5th, 2009
Western Digital WDG2NC20000N My Book World Edition II 2 TB Ethernet External Hard Drive Review from Mom’s in the Garden. Good idea, poor execution, Pros:
- 2 TB of storage!!
- Network-attached so all of my computers can access the same data
- Low power (I measured it at 12W standby, 17W active, 18W active w/fan)
- Well-behaved on the LAN. Not once have *any* of the shares become unavailable, even with *many* computers banging away simultaneously.
- Web interface is easy to understand and use.
Cons:
- Fan is not overly quiet (I wouldn’t call it loud), though this is not a big issue since I moved it from near my computer to near my networking equipment.
- Web interface is SLOW! I’m not sure why it is so slow, but it’s a minor issue since I don’t configure the device often.
- I have been unable to sustain a write speed higher than about 320 MB/minute, even when directly connected with a gigabit link. I’m not sure of what to attribute this limit, but network traffic as recorded by Vista was only 80 Mbps. (It’s entirely possible that this limit is due to my computer and not the drive, but I have no way to tell for sure.)
I bought this product even though it had very negative reviews here. (The one positive review is for the USB/Firewire sister drive, so it is not overly relevent, IMO.) The reason I went ahead is that I have no need (or desire) for sharing files over the internet. Instead, the goal was to have a large RAID network-attached storage device on our local network for use by the many computers on the network. I decided, before purchasing, that I would NOT install the WAN software that ships with the drive. That software DOES sound bad to me based on the reviewer comments here and makes data available on the internet, which is something I want to AVOID!
Before I received the drive, I did some tests using my existing network to see how Windows shares behave. The short answer is that Vista and XP *both* behave poorly when reading and writing files over the network. Transfers were slow, but worse, access to shared directories often fails (generally on the client, not the computer sharing the directory) sometimes requiring a reboot just to be able to reconnect to the share. Other issues included Windows update rebooting the computer doing the sharing, disconnecting all of the clients.
So when I received the device, I expected to continue having the client problems I had seen with Windows by itself. And I was not disappointed! Both Vista and XP clients do occasionally disconnect from the shares, with some client computers being worse-behaved than others. However, this drive has performed quite well with as many as 8 clients *simultaneously* banging away on the drive.
Here are some things to consider before you buy this drive:
1) You might want to test copying files over your home network prior to purchasing this drive. That will give you a quick idea of what to expect. It is likely that you have never before tried to transfer 10s or 100s of gigabytes over your home network before. You are likely to find multiple issues with your network when you perform such a test.
2) How fast is your home networking equipment? At 10 Mbps, you can expect reading and writing files over your network to be *extremely* slow. At 100 Mbps, which is what most home networks support, reading and writing large files over the network will still be slow. Wireless networks tend to fall somewhere between 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps, so it will tend to be slower than 100 Mbps for file transfers. Gigabit ethernet, which is still rare in home networks, is reasonably fast, but still is not as fast as file transfers within your computer.
3) How stable is Windows (Vista or XP) when transferring 10s or 100s of gigabytes of data to or from a Windows share? Unfortunately, the answer is that they are not very good. To get around this significant issue, I am using a tool called teracopy to improve the performance.
4) The first thing I did was to upgrade the firmware in this device. It went from version 01.01.18 that came on the device to 02.00.15. I don’t know what issues were addressed, but it likely includes many fixes to various issues.
As you can see, this product will not be for everyone, but most of the issues that arise are not the fault of Western Digital. Just know what you are getting into before you purchase. I’m happy with the purchase because it fits my needs well. However, I am thinking of making upgrades to my home network to improve speeds to/from this device.
To check price or purchase Western Digital WDG2NC20000N Hard Drive.
