Fast, green and Mac ready, WD's My Book Studio Edition II dual-drive, quad-interface external storage system for Mac offers optimum performance with up to one-third reduction in power consumption - get the speed you need and save a tree. Lightning-fast FireWire 800 interfaces combined with RAID 0 (Striped) yields high performance for fast, smooth video and audio editing, rendering complex 3D objects or special effects, and saving huge blocks of data in record time. Includes automatic data backup software, user-serviceability, a 5-year limited warranty, and works with Apple's Time Machine. This My Book Studio Edition II external hard drive is the affordable way to save your precious memories including up to 571,000 photos, 500,000 songs or 150 hours of video. Configurable to RAID 1 (Mirrored) eSATA, FireWire 800/400 and USB 2.0 and 1.1 Interface System Requirements - Mac OS X 10.4.10+, 10.5.2+, Windows 2000/XP/Vista; Available eSATA, FireWire 800/400 or USB 2.0 port Approximate Unit Dimensions - 3.87(W) x 6.54(H) x 6.06(L) Approximate Unit Weight - 5.2 pounds
Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
Expanded Back-up, November 29, 2008
By
Paul Klass (Long Island, NY)
With the ever increasing size of my digital photo library I needed to increase the size of my back-up drive. I use this unit with a Mac and set to a RAID 1 configuration for mirrored storage. RAID 1 knocks down the usable area to 931 MB. It seems to work with Apple's Time Machine back-up program and OS 10.5. I did reformat from my Mac as I have always found I have to do for external drives. After about a month, everything seems good.
Why does it unmount itself?, November 25, 2008
By
bcarpenter (Sydney, Australia)
Would be great, if the silly thing didn't unmount itself for no reason. Usually when there's no activity, although I dread the day is happens in the middle of a video edit. (There are reports around that it does happen.) For some reason, it just unmounts itself. Disappears off the desktop. No reason. Only comes back with a physical push of the power button. Of course, Western Digital says the problem is with Mac OS, not with them. No other drives display this problem & this is a commonly reported problem in forums.
Raid 1 Doesn't Work, November 24, 2008
By
Hawkman (United States)
Like another reviewer, I tried using the WD tool to change the drive to Raid 1 and it would never finish. I even left it running overnight. I ended up returning it and keeping my Drobo. When I called tech support, they said it could take 6 hours.. well after 12 or more hours, I gave up.
An excellent drive at a great Amazon price, November 19, 2008
By
Karl-Franz MarquezThis drive was exactly what I wanted:
- large capacity
- FW800
- USB2
- eSata
- quiet (no fan)
- HFS pre-formatted for Mac
- easy configuration utility to convert to a mirrored drive array
- easy to exchange drives
- stylish
- compact
I have had very good luck with Western Digital drives so far. Hopefully this one will continue that trend. I considered purchasing a Drobo FW800, but some people have commented that their reliability is suspect and have lost their data when attempting to do a firmware upgrade on them. Also, their FW800 speed isn't as fast as other competing drives.
The only bummer about this drive is that I bought it from Amazon for a great price but now they are selling it for an additional $55 less than I paid for it for it 3 weeks ago.
Raid 1 Doesn't Configure and No Network Support, November 19, 2008
By
S. Ross (Prosper, TX United States)
I was very excited to get this drive after the reviews I read here. This drive may be terrific if you are looking for a single, non-mirrored, external drive, but I need a Raid 1 mirrored configuration. My problems started with the WD Drive Manager installation. It would not install off of the disk. I called tech support and they had me download a newer version, admitting that many of the CD's that were shipped with the product had faulty install software. After installing the Drive Manager, I tried to change the configuration of the drive from Raid 0 to Raid 1. The drive would simply go to sleep midway through the process. Unfortunately, the software would continue to show that it was progressing. There is no way to cancel or quit. You have to force quit the software. I let this go for hours at a time (once overnight) to make sure that I wasn't cutting the process short, but to no avail. The drive never would reconfigure. Last, I plugged the drive into my wireless router to see if I could at least configure it as storage for my wife and children to use for shared content such as photos, videos, etc. Alas, no dice. I called support again and was told their other external drives will work that way but not this one. If all you need is a really big desktop external drive that does NOT need to be mirrored, then I suppose you should give this a try. If you need mirrored Raid 1 or a network drive, go elsewhere.
