Western Digital intros quad interface My Book Studio Edition

Don't say Iomega is the only bunch using the Apple Expo to unveil a new hard drive, as Western Digital is expanding its (recently expanded) My Book lineup once more with the Studio Edition. This unit comes formatted for Macs, is available in sizes ranging from 320GB to 1TB and features a quadruple interface giving users the option of using USB 2.0, FireWire 400 / 800, or eSATA. Additionally, the drive offers up "automatic, continuous backup," a capacity gauge, five-year warranty, SmartPower feature, a fanless design to keep things quiet, and of course, an "elegant silver metallic finish that perfectly complements other Mac products." The new crew is available now from $199.99 to $399.99 depending on capacity.

[david @ Sep 25th 2007 12:48PM]

huh, looks like 2 firewire 800, 1 esata and 1 usb to me,

[Mike @ Sep 25th 2007 12:48PM]

Nice! These look great. They make my old black one look so old now xD.

I'm going to have to pick one of these up as a "Christmas present"!

[the godfather @ Sep 25th 2007 12:57PM]

4 ports and no ethernet?

[feffrey @ Sep 25th 2007 1:08PM]

this isn't a nas device. it would be nice, but the price would go even higher up. I do like the dual drive one, to bad they don't sell it as an enclosure only.

[John Allison @ Sep 25th 2007 1:12PM]

Amen. We have come to a point where ethernet chipsets are nor more expensive than eSATA, FW, or USB, so why keep them from existing on reasonably priced devices? I see no reasons for the large jump in price for a protocol/hardware combo that has existed for decades.

[Will @ Sep 25th 2007 1:13PM]

As I said in the comments about the new Iomega drives, this is an external hard drive. If you want network storage, buy something else.

The iPhone can browse the web, but it can't do it over ethernet. That's because it's a mobile device, and it's intended purpose isn't sitting at a desk with Safari. Do people complain about the lack of ethernet connectivity on their phones? This drive is for plugging into your computer and putting files on it. If you want to do it over a network then go buy a drive with an ethernet port. There are plenty of options.

[Podaman @ Sep 25th 2007 3:44PM]

@Will:

Plenty of options? I can't find a single option that has all three ethernet, usb, and esata (the usb and esata for local computer connection, not expansion or printers).

I want it connected to my desktop via esata for fast local speeds...

but when I'm on my laptop I want to remotely access it via ethernet-WiFi.

Oh, and it needs 2-bay hot-swap SATA RAID-1.

As far as I can tell, this doesn't exist.

[Shadowise @ Sep 25th 2007 1:11PM]

I like the idea of the capacity guage on the front. Don't really want to replace my 4, 500GB MyBooks though.

[pete @ Sep 25th 2007 1:28PM]

It's not about the cost of the ethernet chipset, it's about the suckiness of the fileserver software WD puts on their NAS devices.
Seriously, I've tried a bunch of WD NAS drives and they all behave very badly. Write speeds are abysmal, they drop off the network almost every day requiring reboot, and frequently corrupt themselves.
This seems like a good move for WD, especially when MSoft home server will pretty much obsolete crappy NAS devices (yes, I'm an optimist).

[Will @ Sep 25th 2007 1:29PM]

A few days ago, when I saw the previous update to the My Book line, I was disappointed. I needed Firewire 800 for my Macbook Pro, and they didn't include it. This makes my day.

I should mention, a 5 year warranty on an external HD is EXCEPTIONAL. I've never had one last that long, and in my recent searching for a new one, all of the FW800 drives I've seen have a 2 year warranty.

Granted, if it does start to fail you'll still need to buy a new drive to copy your files to before you get it replaced, but if you have it mirrored to another one it's not a problem. Also, a low speed single interface HD to use as temporary holding space in the event of a failure won't cost a whole lot by the time one of these will be breaking.

I'm so getting this.

[Paul G @ Sep 26th 2007 7:02AM]

WD will send you out a replacement drive before you have to send back the defective one, I had to replace one recently. Other than postage I didn't have to hand over any money :)

[nano @ Sep 25th 2007 1:35PM]

And all I want in the meanwhile is an enclosure for bare drives with screwless removable tray and FW800/400/USB2.

[anthonyhuff8 @ Sep 25th 2007 1:48PM]

I like the new design. To bad I bought a 500 gb one that actually looks like a book. These just look awesome and are great enough connect to any PC or MAC to work optimally in any environment.

[Harlock @ Sep 25th 2007 2:18PM]

test

[John Allison @ Sep 25th 2007 2:40PM]

"As I said in the comments about the new Iomega drives, this is an external hard drive. If you want network storage, buy something else."

Will,

This isn't point. The question is really, "Why is ethernet being left out of a product touting flexible connectivity when the cost of implementation is low?" At one time having an NAS required a much larger investment of time and energy from developers to implement. As such, the addition of ethernet connectivity was a marketable trait that would command a hefty premium.

I have had an ethernet port on my computers for well over a decade. This can not be said of USB 2.0, Firewire, or ESATA. So I am confused as to why a company leaves out a mature, easy, and cost effective connection option when implementing this project.

I argue that as time and technology have progressed we should be seeing ethernet ports as standard equipment on items marketed for flexible connectivity. Those "complaining" about the lack of ethernet are those who believe it is time for that type of connection to become standard. We are voicing our demand of the market, and that is perfectly valid in a capitalist society.

[Shahryar @ Sep 25th 2007 2:42PM]

Pretty cool... I Saw the commotion over these drives over on tuaw.com a couple days back (http://www.tuaw.com/2007/09/21/new-my-book-external-hds-from-wd/ )

I myself own a few external drives, but the one I'm mainly using is a Western Digital MyBook Pro 500GB Triple Interface (USB 2.0 and Firewire 400/800) External Hard Drive - WDG1T5000N that I got from Buy.com for $169 w/ Google Checkout back in May here's the direct link (
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=202712831&loc=101&pageFormat=20&rs=1&#cReviews )

So far, so good but it gives me problems once in a while with my 15" 2.16ghz macbook pro C2D which makes me have to reset the computer.

I've been wanting to get another drive for a while to back up the content of this drive. This new drive is something to consider.

[james @ Sep 25th 2007 3:40PM]

Like the previous generation, do these NOT support Server 2003? I just picked up a MyBook Premium Edition II and it does not work on 2003.

[Will @ Sep 25th 2007 4:10PM]

@Podaman

Hmm. Don't think I've ever seen one with both eSATA and ethernet. Best bet there is probably to get an eSATA/USB drive and hook it up to a router that can share it, like the Airport Extreme. At this point it seems like eSATA still isn't common enough for there to be much of a market for such a drive.

[hayblair @ Sep 26th 2007 9:15AM]

Is this a friggin joke the thing looks like the vista dvd packaging case frosted up come on where's their creativity in design.

[jackal @ Nov 9th 2007 7:38AM]

Just got the 1TB delivered today. Hooked up to my PB G4 1.67GHz via FW800, XBench reported an uncached read speed of 46.54 MB/sec (with 256K blocks, I think--I already closed the window). Not too shabby--15 MB/sec faster than my other FW800 drive by Other World Computing.

I thought long and hard about going with the My Book Pro Edition II 2TB version, which offers FW400/800 and USB 2.0 but not eSATA but does offer built-in RAID 1 (so in effect I'd be able to have the same capacity drive but higher reliability, since it would be mirrored, or I could be greedy and use all 2TB...). However, two things swung me over: the fanless design of the Studio edition, since many reviews of the Pro II mentioned its jet engine-like noise, and the 5-year warranty (if they're willing to stand behind it that long, it must be a good product and use their high-end mechanisms). Future-proofing myself with eSATA didn't hurt, either.

I had initially looked at their NAS offerings (the World Edition II), but the specs don't mention it being Mac compatible and online postings showed no luck getting it to work with the Mac. Besides, I don't have GigE wired in my house yet (and 802.11g is not nearly fast enough to even consider), and as much of a pain plugging it in to my laptop will be, it's still the best solution so far.

I'm already dreaming of the things I can do with the extra 935GB of space left after formatting, and between backups and media archiving, I think I'm going to run out of room very easily...

[wiangube @ Nov 12th 2007 10:18AM]

I have a question: what should you consider when buying a ESATA external hard drive?

I need to choose from the ones you find in here:

http://www.compuplus.com/ps-products-comboid-942~.html?sid=tv8493835475672&track=catSubcat