I partially agree, but recently, only after two days of ownership encountered a bug with Tronky 5.1.9 where the database somehow self-corrupted and Twonky Media Server refused to start. WD’s first level support would be to factory reset the drive which is utterly crazy when all it required was to manually erase two files under Linux’s bash shell.
What I found out throws back at you the statement “For the most part it is been reliable and bug free”.
I am not such a guru at this but would it not be easy to have Twonky 6 in there but have additional options in a future firmware update that would allow a factory reset of individual software components within the NAS? For example, say I decided to do something stupid under the root shell under a twonkymedia folder that renders it totally broken for some script to remove the installed twonky media server and reinstalled it as if from factory WITHOUT resetting or formatting anything else. Same with the iTunes server, the Samba server, etc… It’s not rocket science.
In a matter of fact I’ve used the SSH access to Linux to tale a copy of every configuration file I can find so if something screws up a configuration file the I can, at least, manually copy back a previous valid configuration file hence no need for me to unnecessarily format the entire drive.
This is all simple common sense and it seems mad that the only opton available is to do a full format or a quick format. Just makes no common sense at all.
I’ve replaced a Lacie NAS because the WD NAS allows Linux root access so I can at least fix problems. I personally have no desire to install any additional software on it. The Lacie has a simple factory restore that was 100% effective and DID NOT lose any files. Why can’t Western Digital do the same?
WDTony wrote:
I wouldn’t characterize us that way. You are “assuming” many things when you make comments like that.We did an extensive evaluation and testing of twonky. Decisions were made that it was too unstable and had way too many issues to ship in a consumer product.
In fact, we will have a firmware update in the next quarter that will have some exciting features…
I would temper your criticism a bit going forward.
Tony
Edit - I wanted to add some color to this thread for you all:
The misconception in this case is twofold: 1. It is very easy to change the firmwareon the units. 2. Because changing the firmware is so easy then WD isn’t changing it because they don’t care.
I am not sure you understand how difficult it is to release software. Moving to a major release like twonky 6 (assuming it even passed our tests) requires quite a bit of effort -including certification testing (DLNA, Microsoft, etc.) , system testing, and compatibility testing in order to have the highest quality release.
Are we happy with Twonky 5? For the most part it is been reliable and bug free. There are always newer software stacks and services that we are looking at for this as well as future products. We definitely are looking at these moving forward.
One last point, we do not endorse nor will we support user modified changes to our product. You are on your own if you go and make changes like this to your My Book Live and most likely you will void your warranty.
