Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition II 2TB Firewire 400 / 800 & eSata External Hard Drive
Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II 2TB eSATA/FireWire/USB Hard Drive (External)Features:The speed you need: Lightning-fast FireWire 800 combined with RAID 0 (Striped) yields the speed you need for smooth video editing, rendering complex 3D objects or special effects and saving huge blocks of data in record time Cooler, quieter, eco-friendlier: Designed to use only WD’s GreenPower drives, this system uses about 30% less energy than standard systems and runs quietly because it doesn’t need a fan Formatted for Mac: Works with Apple’s Time Machine. Includes software and instructions for reformatting to Windows Quad interface: Power your creativity with connections for ultra-fast eSATA and FireWire 800. For flexibility and convenience, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 are also included Automatic backup software: Back up important projects to multiple destinations including file servers, portable drives and My Book. Set it and forget it; every time you save a change it’s automatically backed up Capacity gauge: See at a glance how much space is available on your storage system Intelligent drive management features: Automatic power-up, Safe Shutdown, and LED status and activity lights make this storage system especially easy to use. (Works with USB and FireWire connections only.)
- My Book Studio Edition II 2TB
Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition II 2TB Firewire 400 / 800 & eSata External Hard Drive
Review by P. W. Rautenbach for Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition II 2TB Firewire 400 / 800 & eSata External Hard Drive
(5 / 5)
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I’ve had a USB 500MB MyBook for some time and it has never given any trouble. I’ve also had my eye on the Studio Edition MyBook because it is Mac-friendly and has FireWire 800, which I want for video editing in iMovie. So when the time came to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) I took a quick look at what I could get and went for the Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition II 2TB Firewire 400/800 & eSata External Hard Drive. The 2TB size allows me to have a 700GB Time Machine partition and still have over 1TB for video storage. I’m using the time machine volume for both my iMac and my new 13″ MacBook Pro. If you use the disk with Time Machine, first select the disk and choose Get Info from the File menu in Finder and untick the “Ignore ownership on this volume” check box.
The disk is attached to my iMac and enabled as a shared disk. The MacBook backs up wirelessly over WiFi to the shared disk. The initial MacBook backup would have taken a long time over WiFi so I plugged the disk directly into the MacBook for the first backup to get the benefit of the 800Mb/s speed. The transfer was very quick.
To get this to work properly, you start the first Time Machine backup over WiFi and then, once it gets going and starts copying files, you stop the Time Machine backup and restart it with the disk plugged directly into the laptop using the FireWire 800 cable (which comes with the disk). This ensures the Time Machine backups are correctly configured for remote backups over WiFi in normal use: For a remote backup, Time Machine needs a disk image on a shared drive. I created a sparse image volume using Disk Utility and then selected it for the first Time Machine backup from the laptop over WiFi. When I attached the disk directly to the MacBook for backup, Time Machine noticed the previously created .sparseimage for the MacBook and used it rather than creating a fresh backup.
As with my previous 500MB MyBook, this 2TB MyBook Studio is effectively silent.
Recommended.
Review by Mr. F. W. Appleby for Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition II 2TB Firewire 400 / 800 & eSata External Hard Drive
(5 / 5)
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This drive is quite a commitment as it costs a fair amount however if you need the space it really is worth it.
You can set the drive up in 1 of two ways, RAID 0 or RAID 1.
With RAID 0 both drives team up to deliver 2tb of space and increased speed. With RAID 1 you have 1TB of space available but the other drive is a clone of the first drive for redundancy.
It has usb, two firewire 800 ports and an esata. It includes usb, firewire 800, 400 and esata cables. The firewire ports can be used to daisy chain to other drives. (windows only) The usb and firewire ports are quick but the real gem is the esata connector that allows the drives to really flex some muscle, where you can see speeds up to 110MB/s (raid 0) Up from the 40MB/s of firewire 400, and 30MB/s of usb.
It has a 5 year warranty if it does go under and after using WD RMA service for other products I can safely say that they are no problem at all to deal with.
The raid is also done in hardware and is automatic. You don’t need any drivers for the unit and you can swap it from pc to pc without a problem. The raid 1 array will automatically rebuild once you insert the new drive. The unit makes use of two 1TB GP drives, which you can pick up for retail should you ever need to.
Last of all, this unit is good for the home environment. The GP drives are very quiet and cool, allowing the unit to remain fanless. The drive also powers off after a period of inactivity and just powers back up when you need to use it saving energy while keeping noise to a minimum.
Review by D. R. Cantrell for Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition II 2TB Firewire 400 / 800 & eSata External Hard Drive
(5 / 5)
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I have recently replace all the external drives on my file server. Previously I was using four Lacie 1TB jobbies (each of which was really four 250GB disks internally), but wanted to replace them because they’re noisy and draw a lot of power. So I ended up with two Western Digital Mybook Studio II 2TB devices, which I’ve been using for 3 months (one of them) and one and a half months (the other).
I’ve got the same amount of storage as before, but it’s now pretty much silent, drawing a lot less power. They were easy to install – as is expected these days with a modern operating system they’re “plug n’ play”. They even came out of the box pre-formatted with HFS+ instead of something retarded but PC-compatible,although if you are lumbered with a legacy Windows machine reformatting them should be trivial. Speed is … not something I care much about, as all my access to them is over a nyetwork that is slower than the bus connecting the disks to the host machine, but they’re not noticeably slow.
I chose those disks because they were the ony ones I could find that were the right capacity and had both USB 2 and Firewire 400 ports. I need FW400 because the machine hosting them is old enough to have that and to have Ye Olde Slowe USBe. I want USB 2 for future compatibility. Turns out that they also have FW800 (which I’ll probably never use) and eSATA, which may be useful one day.
They’re also upgradable. The old Lacies I had aren’t – they’re sealed units. With these WD units, you’re supposed to be able to lift the lid and replace the disks. And there’s the only small niggle I have with ‘em. On both the drives, the lid feels really cheap and plasticky, and wouldn’t open properly. Yes, I did read the manual. I ended up levering them open with a screwdriver, and now they won’t close properly.
But that’s a small gripe. I might care if I had to carry them around with me, but I don’t. I might care if I was the sort of shallow fool who cares what his disks look like, but I’m not. I reckon they’re damned good value for money.
Review by Dr Zeus for Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition II 2TB Firewire 400 / 800 & eSata External Hard Drive
(5 / 5)
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I have had this installed on my iMac for about a month now and it seems to work faultlessly. I use it to store my large photographic library and have it in Raid 1 configuration so everything is mirrored on the second drive.
It was very easy to install and configure just plug it into firewire or USB install the enclosed software click on the icon in the toolbar to configure to Raid 0 or Raid 1 and away you go!
I have this drive daisy chained by firewire 800 to a MyBook 1tb Studio Edition which is my ‘Time Machine’ drive.
Would thoroughly recommend this to anyone with a Mac looking for a high capacity external hard drive
I have had 2 WD drives for about 2 years – a WD passport and a 1tb MyBook Essential Edition which have been used with a laptop and PC desktop respectively and both have been heavily used and have prooved to be completely reliable.
Review by RnA for Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition II 2TB Firewire 400 / 800 & eSata External Hard Drive
(5 / 5)
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There’s really not much you can say about a hard drive system, other than it works! I’ve got about 8 Western Digital MyBook products now, and they are each flawless.
Setup cannot be simpler — take it out of the box, and plug it in. The drives ship pre-formated, and anyone spending £300+ on a piece of equipment will know how to set it up for their requirements. I’m using mine as a media storage unit for movies, photos and music in a RAID1, so 1TB of data is mirrored on two physical drives.
I only wish larger drives existed. But for now, it’s the best out there! Strongly recommended!!