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Western Digital Service Restricts Use of Network Drives
sehlat writes "Via BoingBoing comes the news that Western Digital's My Book(TM) World Edition(TM) II, sold with promises of internet-accessible drive space, is now restricting the types of files the drive will serve up. 'Western Digital is disabling sharing of any avi, divx, mp3, mpeg, and many other files on its network connected devices; due to unverifiable media license authentication. Just wondering -- who needs a 1 Terabyte network-connected hard drive that is prohibited from serving most media files? Perhaps somebody with 220 million pages of .txt files they need to share?'" Update: 12/07 03:28 GMT by Z : To clarify, it actually seems as though this is a bad summary. The MioNET service that WD packages with the networked drives is responsible for the rights of users via the network. There are a few (obvious) ways to get around that.
Here (http://mybookworld.wikidot.com/hacks-and-howto)
Is that a roll of dimes in your pocket or are you happy to see me?
Sounds more to me like they just can't be shared via "WD Anywhere". Not that they can't be stored on the drive. I may misunderstand though.
*Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the most common audio and video file types cannot be shared with different users using WD Anywhere Access. A list of the non shareable file types can be found here.
Or just never install MioNET in the first place. Either way, here's how.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
The limitation on the media files is when using the WD Anywhere Access. You can still backup and share your music files within your own network and even remotely. Not being totally familiar with the product, but I assume they have "guest" or anonymous sharing folders where you can "Offer your clients an easy way to access business documents, designs, and artwork." They probably also include some proprietary WD client program that lets you access your media files from remote locations so you can play your MP3's while at some hotel in Aruba. So the drive isn't an anchor, but it can't be popped on to the net and easily used to share MP3's with the world. Seems simple enough.
:)
Comcast would likely throttle down your Internet connection anyway once they saw all those MP3's being streamed.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
The mybook we II runs Linux, and it's trivial to get shell on it. You can make it do whatever you want.
If you really want to know the travesty about the internet access to it, read up on the web. It's a java-based system called Mionet which requires a special client on your windows machine that you'll use to access it remotely. Did I mention the $50/year that you pay a 3rd party to access your own files? Mionet inexplicably forces you to go through their server to get to your files. Do a google search to find horror stories of Mionet being down and people being unable to reach their own files for more than a day. I'm a programmer - I know of no reason to create it this way other than to extract ongoing revenue from those who don't know better. Using dyndns and an open port will let you get to your files reliably from anywhere.
As for mine, I got shell, disabled the mionet stuff, made sure sshd was coming up every time, and I use it as a really slow Linux machine with a large disk. Be forewarned, it's dog slow. It has a gigabit ethernet port on it that typically pumps out about 50Mbits/sec. Seriously, a 100Mbit port would be half-wasted. Let's not even talk about write speeds.
If you buy one, note that you also don't need to use their windows setup utility, it has a complete web interface.
I paid $300 for a 1TB drive, which, frankly, was little more than I would have paid for a plain external drive at the time. Bonus is that I can connect another usb drive into it and share it on the network.
And one other bonus - it comes with a complete toolchain on its 3GB linux partition, so you can build software on it without having to install other toolchains on another linux machine. The 200MHz processor isn't the fastest at building, but it does fine.
Do you have ESP?
Gmail currently does not restrict *.rar files (nor does Gmail scream at you for what file types your compressed RAR volume might contain). Use WinRAR for free. http://www.rarsoft.com/download.htm
It works in: Pocket PC, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and MS DOS. I love it so much I *GLADLY* PURCHASED IT! ($29) So call me a WinRAR fanboy.
It is a superior replacement to WinZIP (and other zip clones) with better compression algorithms (and you can also encrypt your compressed files AND their filenames WITH authenticity verification plus it handles everything WinZIP does).
Why is everyone willing to write long essays without even spending a few seconds confirming that the story is correct? BoingBoing and Slashdot have it wrong. The drive stores and retrieves whatever files you put on it. It has one particular feature, optionally installed, that allows access to your drive from the Internet at large, and this one feature limits the filetypes you can share.
Please stop the spread of bullshit on the web, do at least a few seconds of research before assuming everything you read is true.
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