I bought a Western Digital MyBook WorldEdition II, the 1.5TByte one. Pictures are on my desktop disks, on DVD’s, on the server. I have a lot of audio files I play during the day on the external disk of my laptop. So it was time for something more centralized, since the gf also like to see my pictures, and have room to store hers.
You need a Windows machine to get the thing up and running. The software is a Java-program that basically enables you to communicate with the device. After the initial setup (static IP, etc.), you can just use the machine like any other share on your network (with Windows, or with Linux using smbfs). To change settings, you login to the internal webserver.
The device is mostly quiet, but sometimes the cooling fan(s?) come alive. Not for too long, so it’s not something to worry about. I did not do any timings yet, but the drive seems fast. The connecting-to-the-share process is faster than it is when connecting to a Windows share, which is not really a surprise. You can create different shares, different users, with three levels (none, read-only, full) of access per share.
I’ll keep you updated on how the disk behaves when filling up. I’m copying pictures onto it now, starting with 2004 (older is not on harddisk but on CD/DVD).