WD® Provides Consumers Fastest Access to Their Content With New Home Network Drive

LAKE FOREST, Calif., Oct. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world's leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its My Book® Live™ home network drive (photo), which gives consumers the fastest storage of and access to their content among consumer-grade network drives and provides a seamless set-up for centralizing a home's digital media. The drives present an easy and secure way to consolidate movies, music, and photos in one location while providing convenient access to digital content from multimedia devices in the connected home.

WD has leveraged the latest processor technology to deliver transfer speeds up to 100 MBps, more than triple the speed of traditional USB 2.0 drives and at least double the speeds of other network drives in its class.

My Book Live home network drive's built-in media server makes it a fast, simple solution for users who wish to view videos, music and images on any Mac® or PC connected to the home network and stream digital media to a television set through a DLNA®-certified multimedia device such as WD TV® Live Plus HD media player, Blu-ray Disc™ player, Xbox 360® or PlayStation® 3 game console. Users can also play music and videos stored on their drive in iTunes®, as well as view their digital photos on their iPhone®, iPod touch® and iPad^™ with the swipe of a finger through the included WD Photos™ application. Users can also securely access and share all the content and files stored on the My Book Live from any Internet-connected PC or Mac using WD's free remote access service.

"Network attached storage presents tremendous opportunity for families wishing to centralize all of their digital content and enjoy it on computers, TVs and smartphones around their home and beyond," said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD's branded products group. "Our consumer research tells us that consumers need a simple way to set up a one-stop shop for their digital media. WD's My Book Live home network drive makes it easy for anyone to enjoy the benefits of network storage and delivers blazing read speeds to boot."

My Book Live Home Network Drive

My Book Live home network drive features:      

• Simple set-up – ready in minutes;
• Seamless video streaming with a built-in DLNA media server;
• Automatic backup with WD SmartWare™ software for Windows;
• Apple® Time Machine® compatibility;
• Gigabit Ethernet technology for speeds faster than USB 2.0 drives; and,
• A 3-year limited warranty.

Capacity and Compatibility

My Book Live home network drive is available in capacities of 1 TB and 2 TB and is compatible with Windows® XP, Windows Vista®, Windows 7, Mac OS® X Leopard® and Snow Leopard®, as well as DLNA/UPnP® enabled devices.

Price and Availability

My Book Live home network drive has a 3-year limited warranty and is now available at select U.S. retailers and online at the wdstore.com. MSRP is $169.99 USD for 1 TB and $229.99 USD for 2 TB.

About WD

WD, one of the storage industry's pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company designs and produces reliable, high-performance hard drives and solid state drives that keep users' data accessible and secure from loss. Its advanced technologies are configured into applications for client and enterprise computing, embedded systems and consumer electronics, as well as its own consumer storage and media products.

WD was founded in 1970. The company's storage products are marketed to leading OEMs, systems manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital® and WD brand names. Visit the Investor section of the company's website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information.

Western Digital, WD, the WD logo, My Book, WD TV, and Mionet are registered trademarks in the U.S. and other countries; WD Photos and WD SmartWare are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Other marks may be mentioned herein that belong to other companies. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products may be available in all regions of the world. All product and packaging specifications subject to change without notice. The term of your limited warranty depends on the country in which your product was purchased. Please visit our website at http:support.wdc.com/warranty for the detailed terms and conditions of our limited warranty and for a list of the specific countries in these regions. As used for storage capacity, one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. As used for transfer rate or interface, megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second.

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SOURCE Western Digital Technologies