A bit of a flap over the new Western Digital stand-alone network hard drives.
Here is the Western Digital web page for the product:
My Book™ World Edition™ II
Add this unique remote-access storage system to your wired or wireless network and you’ll have a surprisingly simple and secure way to access and share data and photos at home, in the office, and anywhere in the world—even when your local computer is off. The included RAID software makes it easy for you to take advantage of RAID mirroring for extra data protection.
It includes the following feature:
WD Anywhere Access™ - This storage system and all the files on it are always accessible when you need them, even when your local computer is turned off.
Only one weeeee liddle problem here — read this web page: Western Digital Service and Support:
List of file types on a WD My Book World Edition that cannot be shared by WD Anywhere Access.
Question
What files cannot be shared by WD Anywhere Access?
Answer
Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the following file types cannot be shared by different users using WD Anywhere Access.
If these file types are on a share on the WD My Book World Edition system and another user accesses the share, these file will not be displayed for sharing. Any other file types can be shared using WD Anywhere Access.
File Extension File Description AAC Advanced Audio Coding AIF Audio Interchange File AIFC Audio Interchange File AIFF Audio Interchange File Format AMF DSMIA/Asylum Module File ASF Advanced Streaming Format ASX Advanced Stream Redirector AVI Audio Video Interleave CDA CD Audio DVI DivX AVI DVIX DivX AVI FAR Farandoyle Tracker Music Module IT Impulse Tracker ITZ Impulse Tracker KAR Karaoke MIDI MDZ Cubic Player/Cross-View Music Module Description MOV QuickTime Video MP1 MPEG Layer 1 (Audio) MP2 MPEG Layer 2 (Audio) MP3 MPEG Layer 3 (Audio) MP4 MPEG Layer 4 (Video) MPA MPEG Audio Stream, Layer I, II or III MPE MPEG Video MPEG MPEG Video MPG MPEG Video MPGA MPEG Layer 3 (Audio Stream) MPV2 MPEG Audio Stream, Layer II OOG OOG Bitstream OKT Oktalyzer Tracker Module PTM PTM - Poly Tracker Module (Audio) QT QuickTime Video QT1 QuickTime Video VOB Video Object (DVD Video) VOC Creative Labs Sound WM Windows Media Audio or Video WMA Windows Media Audio WMV Windows Media Video
What gives these fucking nannys the right to play traffic cop on a piece of equipment for which you have paid full price.
Granted, this is just this one product from this company, the software has a history of poor reliability and you can simply buy a bare WD drive and a $40 NAS box and build your own but still; this is really galling. They are playing traffic cop when there is no way in Hell that they can see where your data came from. Someone getting one of these at Costco with the idea of using it as a media warehouse will be sorely disappointed.
And a big tip of the hat to BoingBoing
Posted by DaveH at December 6, 2007 09:22 PM | TrackBack