Having the software installed does make it easier to work with the drive though. From there you can access the software folder to install the included software, or not, it’s not required once you know the IP address of the device. If you don’t have an optical drive, don’t worry, once the My Book Live is conencted to the network it’s easily found by both Macs and PCs. WD includes a quick start guide with the drive that pretty much says plug it in and run the included CD. Our includes a 1TB hard drive, with 2TB and 3TB configurations also available. The My Book Live contains a Caviar Green inside with the capacity varying depending on which model is purchased. Overall the case was designed with ease of use in mind, which WDC hit on all counts. The back of the drive contains the Ethernet port, power input, Kensington lock and recessed reset pin. The unit is fanless which is great for low noise output – the vents appear sufficient to keep the drive cool inside. The top, back and side are all vented to help the heat passively escape from the drive. The body is black plastic, not nearly as nice as the aluminum used in the My Studio line, but it gets the job done and keeps cost down.

It’s has a sleek, minimalist rounded face with a small WD badge and pinhole-sized green status light. The My Book Live shares much of the same physical design WD has been using with their external desktop drives for some time. WD sees families, and even small businesses, dumping their assets on the My Book Live for retrieval from just about any type of device including the iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, notebooks and just about anything else with a web browser. That may seem obvious, but not every personal cloud device is created with the same attention to simplicity and ease of use. From setup to configuration and management of the device, WD makes it just work. Western Digital’s approach to solving the media file overload problem with the My Book Live is to make everything simple. With seemingly more connected devices in the household now than people, the trend around centralizing a family’s media assets is definitely gaining strength as we want to have reliable and easy access to family photos for instance on our phones, computers and televisions, without having to manage several copies of those files. It’s the cornerstone of WD’s strategy to help consumers organize their content and access it anywhere from the new WD 2go mobile apps to the WD TV Live media streamers connected to a TV. Western Digital has long been in the personal cloud storage space with the WD My Book Live.

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