Hardware Bistro

Product: WMU-6500FS
Manufacturer: AirLive
Supplied by: AirLive
Price: 140USD/RM488
Launch Date: NA

 

Most of the internet users should have BitTorrent experience before as it is a very convenience and fast way for downloading data through internet. Today we will introduce you another innovative product from AirLive; WMU-6500FS. AirLive WMU-6500FS is a 3.5" Turbo-G Wireless HDD enclosure with add on feature for downloading BitTorrent, HTTP, and FTP. Stay with us to explore this device further.

 

Company Profile

The manufacturer of AirLive products, OvisLink Corp. was founded in 1993 in Taiwan by a group of industrial experts who set out to provide the best combination of quality, service, technology and value in the industry. Today, OvisLink Corp. is an international corporation, total networking solution provider with over 200 products and with hundreds of distributors around the world. 

AirLive is a brand providing Innovation, Solutions, Reliability and Technology. AirLive's R&D department continuously focuses its efforts on developing the right products including AirLive^TM WISP and Outdoor solutions, AirLive SMB and Security solutions and AirLive Small Office and Home products.

 

Features

- 125Mbps 3.5' Turbo-G Wireless Hard Drive + Downloader
- Download BitTorrent, HTTP, or FTP file automatically
- Built-in 3.5' Internal Drive Bay
- Create new WLAN network or integrate into existing wireless network
- 2 x USB 2.0 ports
- Share 3.5 inch SATA or IDE Drive Wirelessly
- Can set username and password to limit access only to certain users
- Internet user can access the device throughput standard FTP client
- Download Agents with QoS
- Turbo-G Wireless Multifuncton AP
- Compatible with 802.11g and 802.11b standards
- 4 separate wireless modes : AP, WDS Bridge, WDS Repeater, and Ethernet Client
- WPA, WPA2, and WEP encryption are standard for secure wireless Transmission
- Ultra fast IDE throughput of the WMU-6500FS makes it a perfect companion for A/V Streaming


 
Specifications



Package & Contents

 

Same with other AirLive products, WMU-6500FS comes with a sturdy rectangular box with blue and white colors. Features of this device are listed at the back in Multilanguage. Everything looks simple and fine but we prefer AirLive to include a usage diagram of this device on the packaging box which is important to deliver a clearer message to the users.

 

The device and the rest of the accessories are placed securely and neatly inside the packaging box. A plastic bag is used to keep the WMU-6500FS to avoid it for getting scratches. Accessories that are bundled together with this device are power cord, network cable, AC adapter, antenna, user's manual, installation CD, screws and rubber feet.

 

Same with other 3.5" HDD enclosure, AirLive WMU-6500FS also comes with a power adapter + power cord in order to power up this device. The power adapter is a bit bulky but it can't be eliminated because 3.5" HDD requires more power than 2.5" HDD and furthermore AirLive WMU-6500FS has other components which need to be powered up as well such as wireless transmitter, USB ports. The user's manual is a complete manual with detail information about hardware configuration, troubleshooting indicators, hardware installation, and some software setup.

 

AirLive 3.5'' Turbo-G Wirless HD + Downloader



As usual let us start with some functional perspective of this device; AirLive WMU-6500FS. In short AirLive WMU-6500FS is a 3.5" external HDD enclosure. However AirLive WMU-6500FS isn't a normal external HDD enclosure, it is a wireless or wired HDD enclosure plus downloader. AirLive WMU-6500FS can works as an independent system for data downloading through internet either wireless or wired setup. For the wireless specification, AirLive WMU-6500FS is a Turbo G or Super G device which can deliver up to 125Mbps and it has four separate wireless modes; AP, WDS Bridge, WCS Repeater and Ethernet Client.

 

Here are front and back panels of AirLive WMU-6500FS. There is a row of LEDs in the front panel for displaying its connectivity and it is important for troubleshooting as well. Besides the LEDs, there are two more buttons; shutdown and backup. The shut down button is required to be pressed and held for 4 seconds to shut down the system before power off the device. Same for the backup button, the data will be copied from attached USB device to the HDD after press and hold for 4 seconds. To reset the device to factory default, both of the shutdown and backup buttons are required to be pressed and held for 6 seconds.

 

AirLive WMU-6500FS is a passive cooling HDD enclosure as there isn't any fan included although there is a 40mm fan vent at the back panel. We would prefer AirLive to include this 40mm fan at default as this device is not only having a HDD but also some other components that generate heat as well. Cooling is very important for hardware as it will have direct impact on it; shorten lifespan.

 

At the back of the AirLive WMU-6500FS, there are quite number of connectors; LAN port (for connecting to a router, switch, hub, or Ethernet-enable computer), two USB ports (any USB device like flash drive, digital camera, card reader and etc), power switch, power jack and antenna connector (for wireless connection setup).

 

Aluminum is a very good dissipating material and hence AirLive WMU-6500FS is made by aluminum as well in order to keep the inner HDD/circuit as cool as possible. No fancy stuff or wording on the whole device's layout except an "AirLive" logo. The whole unit of AirLive WMU-6500FS is very rock solid and the overall weight of this device is around 742grams. This could be a bit heavy and not suitable for portable usage especially when HDD is mounted inside.

 

In order to open up the AirLive WMU-6500FS, the back panel needs to be unfasten first then follow by pulling out the whole inner tray from the front panel. The insertion of HDD tray inside the aluminum casing is not really single direction and may cause the user install it wrongly (if you feel that it is hard to slot it then you may try the opposite way). As you can see the aluminum body of AirLive WMU-6500FS is made by very thick aluminum panel which able to protect the HDD well but it may slow down the heat dissipation.

 

Most of the HDD enclosure is either support SATA or IDE HDD but AirLive WMU-6500FS can support both of them although IDE HDD is being phased out by SATA HDD. All the SATA, IDE, power (Molex & SATA) cables are preinstalled inside the AirLive WMU-6500FS. Users may remove those unnecessary cables to keep the inner as spacious as possible to keep the airflow smoother.

 

Here are naked views of the AirLive WMU-6500FS front and back panels. Everything looks good and well designed. The black plastic HDD tray can be removed by unfastening four screws which secure it with the green PCB.

 

As we know AirLive WMU-6500FS is not only an external HDD enclosure and hence you can see a big PCB after remove out the HDD tray. AirLive WMU-6500FS is powered with AMRISC 20000 (133MHz, 32-bit CPU), 4MBytes flash and 32Mbytes SDRAM in order to make it as a standalone system and free away the PC. iTE IT8211F is an IDE controller while SATALink IC is a SATA controller.

 

There is a miniPCI slot of AirLive WMU-6500FS which is occupied by RT2561ST; wirelesses card that based on 802.11g technology. A normal 802.11g will only have 54MB/s throughput but WMU-6500FS is equipped with the rest of the qualified components and make it becomes a Turbo g device with 125MB/s throughput. Such high speed throughput is important for wireless setup especially for transferring huge data through wirelessly.

 

A standard network wireless antenna is included as AirLive WMU-6500FS is also a wireless device which can be configured either in access point or client mode. The wireless antenna is a 2.4GHz dipole antenna which is a standard frequency band for 802.11b/g/n.

 

AirLive WMU-6500FS is designed to be used in vertical way and hence an enclosure stand is provided. The enclosure stand is made by plastic but the quality is quite food. Four rubber feet are included for holding the device firmly on the surface as HDD is a sensitive device will requires more careful handling.

 

Installation, Testing & Performance

 

Installation of AirLive WMU-6500FS is quite simple and what user needs to do is to remove the HDD enclosure's casing of AirLive WMU-6500FS then install either 3.5" SATA or PATA HDD on the HDD tray (don't forget the power and SATA/IDE cables) and follows by fastening the HDD on the tray with four screws. After that install back the HDD enclosure's casing then it is ready to be used. For wireless setup, users need to install the antenna too.

 

Here is the completed setup of AirLive WMU-6500FS with a 3.5" SATA HDD. The whole process is only taken around 10-15 minutes and it shouldn't take more than 30 minutes even for a newbie. All the LED of AirLive WMU-6500FS are in green color which looks a bit boring as most of the computer peripheral hardware are equipped with much nicer LED like blue, white, orange and etc. However this is not important at all so let us focus the rest of the features and issues.

During the testing, there wasn't any much noise that was generated by AirLive WMU-6500FS except the HDD spinning noise which can't be eliminated especially for a dying HDD. As we mentioned before since AirLive WMU-6500FS doesn't comes with any active cooling and we found that the whole enclosure of AirLive WMU-6500FS was quite hot. This may shorten the lifespan of the HDD or other components so for those are planning to run this device 24/7, it would be better to add a 40mm fan or place this device in a more ventilated environment. Overall we have not much concern for AirLive WMU-6500FS and frankly to say this device works quite well.

 

Test Bed 

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3
Heatsink: NorthQ Siberian Tiger Water Cooler
Memory: 4GB 800MHz DDR2 Memory
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate
Graphic Card: OEM Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB
PSU: In Win Commander 1200W
Router: TRENDnet TEW-639GR
Optical Drive: DVD RW HLDS
Operating System: Microsoft XP Pro SP2
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

 

Software Configuration

 

There are two ways to setup the configuration of AirLive WMU-6500FS; either installs the provided software or through web browser by entering the right IP address of AirLive WMU-6500FS. If you have no idea about the IP address of AirLive WMU-6500FS then you may use the software to scan this device automatically; it will be good for the first time setup and after that you can change the device IP address accordingly.

 

After AirLive WMU-6500FS is detected, login is required and the default password will be "airlive". There are three shortcut configuration buttons; Wizard for (mostly for first time setup), General (manual setup) and BitTorent (for setup the BitTorent configuration in faster way).

 

Here are the step by step guides for "Wizard" configuration which helps the user to setup AirLive WMU-6500FS easily and it will be useful for first time setup. First step will be "Set IP & DHCP", leave it with "Auto" if you are not sure which one to select. Second step will be IP setting; user is required to adjust all these setting manually according to his network configuration.

 

Next will be wireless setup; if user is not intend to use wireless connectivity then you may just disable it else user can select either "AP only Mode" (device will become a wireless access point) or "Wireless Client Mode" (device will become a wireless client). If you select "AP only mode" then SSID and channel are required to be filled in so that other wireless client devices can detect this access point.

 

Step 3 and step 4 will be time/date and security configurations which are nothing special so we'll skip here. After that user is required to allocate the disk capacity of the HDD manually; for both Public and Private Partitions. The final step will be formatting the HDD and the supported formats will be FAT/FAT32 or EXT2.

 

For those select "General" then it will direct user to this configuration menu where the detail setup can be fine tuned and adjust here. "Status" menu will display some of the networking information of AirLive WMU-6500FS while the "Network Settings" allows user to fine tune the wired and wireless configuration.

 

For "Storage Configuration", it allows users to adjust the settings such as Disk Utility, File Sharing, Access Control and File Browser. Disk utility allows user to reallocate the HDD allocation for both public and private partitions. The computer name, workgroup of File Sharing will be the exact name that user may find in the "My Network Place" in window mode.

Advanced tools allow user to backup the device configuration, reset to factory default, reboot machine, restore back configuration and upgrade the device firmware.

 

Misc configuration has other manual setup like iTunes Server, UPnP setting, Time setting, Login Setting and event log.

 

Download Assistance is another great feature of AirLive WMU-6500FS because with this, user can download FTP, HTTP and BitTorrent through this device and free away user's PC which can reduce the power consumption.

 

For BitTorrent download assistance, user can upload the BitTorrent file to the AirLive WMU-6500FS and the download status can be monitored in Status section. Beside that user can setup the email alert as well once the download is completed. However there are some limitation of download assistance like maximum tasks can be downloaded at the same time is just only 10 and maximum download speed can be allowed is 100kbps which may not really enough. These limitations are setup in such way to avoid this device has taken the whole bandwidth and slow down other internet activities like internet surfing.

 

Conclusion

We are really impressed with AirLive WMU-6500FS as it is not just merely an ordinary 3.5" HDD enclosure but it is also featured with wireless connectivity, user friendly interface, download assistance, and so on. Besides that AirLive WMU-6500FS can work as a standalone system which is extremely great and able reduce your electrical bill as this device's power consumption is definitely much lower than a computer. Both the hardware and software of AirLive WMU-6500FS are really optimized as AirLive has really put a lot of effort on it. The suggested MSRP for this device is just around 140USD and we will highly recommend this product to you which is an ideal device for data sharing (wired or wireless) and downloading as well.

 

Pros:

* Can work as a standalone system
* 125Mbps; Turbo g wireless
* User friendly interface
* Support IDE and SATA 3.5" HDD
* Wireless can be configured as access point or client point
* Great flexibility in term of software configuration
* Come with download assistance for BitTorrent, HTTP & FTP
* Two USB2.0 ports are available for fast data transferring/back up

Cons:

* Maximum download is only 10 at the same time
* No active cooling is preinstalled

Thanks to AirLive for providing this sample for us to review.

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