Western Digital pumps out the My Book Studio Edition II

Confused by all the various permutations of Western Digital's My Book line of external drives yet? No? Well, go ahead and add the My Book Studio Edition II to your stack of flashcards, Mr. Smart Face. Just like the previous 2TB My Book products, you're getting two RAID 0 drives in a quad-interface external case, only this time it's the updated My Book Studio design. WD's also gone and upgraded the drives themselves to GreenPower units, which run cooler and use less power, and Mac users will be pleased to know that everything comes HFS+ formatted. Got that? Expect a quiz in the near future. Available now, we're told, at $349 for 1TB and $599 for 2TB.

[The Future @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:17PM]

The design is beautiful - almost sculpture-like


Is that the real silver color? WOW

[Chuckles McGee @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:57PM]

The press release headline reads "...Storage for Creative Professionals and Mac(R) Computer Enthusiasts"

Makes it sound as though the two are mutually exclusive...That's bad PR- WD!

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Apr 2nd 2008 9:19PM]

The design is intended to resemble a BOOK, hence the name MY BOOK. Metaphorically modern hard drives are like the encyclopedic books , since they store and hold everything we like to know or preserve. With that in mind, the next edition from Western Digital will be the WD History Book edition featuring
archaic PC interfaces from the past and a 10mb hard drive.

[tom @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:22PM]

It looks just like a book, i really like the design of it.

If only that thing is capable for wireless access as well. :D

[Johnny @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:25PM]

I recently ordered a 2TB MyBook drive and was very disappointed. It looked good and I was excited as I unboxed it, but soon found that it performs horribly compared to other 2TB solutions. Connected via FireWire 800 to a PowerMac G5 server, it was very sluggish compared to the LaCie 1TB it replaced. After giving it a few days, I finally sent it back and paid a little more for the LaCie 2TB which is much faster.

I think on the mac, the problem may be WD's software RAID solution. Others have said that these drives perform better in Windows. Also, I searched everywhere to find the buffer size on these drives and they don't appear to have one (at least worth advertising).

[rjlee @ Apr 8th 2008 2:53PM]

Could you tell us more about your experience?
Which LaCie drive do you have?
I am in between Lacie 2Big and WD MyBook Studio II.

You already mentioned that LaCie is faster.
How about the noise level?

One last question, are these drives spins down after 10 min of no activity? I think My Book does, but not sure for LaCie.

Thanks in advance.

[Flashpoint @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:26PM]

I need p0rn...lots of p0rn

[Leo @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:53PM]

wat

if you'd said pr0n, I'd know what you were on about.

[IT-Accountant @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:31PM]

I own a 500GB MyBook drive and have never had a problem with it. It's fast, reliable and portable.

What I'm really wondering is why they would sell these HFS+ formatted. Is the Mac market really that big now?

[a ham sandwich @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:53PM]

exactly what i was thinking? i mean as a mac user and avid fanboy, even i think formatting it as hfs+ by default is crazy.

[a ham sandwich @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:53PM]

lol. not meant as a question.

[Mr. Gremlin @ Apr 2nd 2008 1:04PM]

My Book Studio editions are designed specially for MAC users, so thats why its HFS+ formatted. None of the other My Books are HFS+...

[tb @ Apr 2nd 2008 2:42PM]

also wonder, AL my externals are fat32, only way to use them if I boot in xp for some work.. pretty lame that ms wont suport hfs+ and apple is too lazy to allow ntfs writes by default

[RikF @ Apr 2nd 2008 3:05PM]

Apple isn't too lazy - MS won't release the specs for NTFS for other OS manufacturers to be able to write to it safely (reading is not a problem). FAT32 is all well and good, but you won't be putting any DVD size images on there...

[Pi @ Apr 3rd 2008 8:12AM]

Not a WD problem but I too hate the fact I have to have NSTC external for my Windows machine backup and Mac formated external for my Mac.

Cheers to the day I can have 1 large external to do all my backups.

[aardvark sandwich @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:34PM]

Or get a Calvary 2Tb drive with Western Digital drives in it for ~$450 at buy.com

[seung @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:35PM]

well contrary to mr IT my 500gb mybook died a painful death right after warranty period. I am very scared for my other identical mybook now.

[dustin3000 @ Apr 2nd 2008 3:02PM]

The same exact thing happened to me. The 500gb drive died exactly two weeks after the warranty expired. I wouldn't touch another WD drive solution ever again.

[Leerlaufprozess @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:40PM]

Why is it Raid 0 if it's only USB + FireWire and not eSATA?

[Curtis Joslin @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:51PM]

well it would give you marginal speed benefits giving the theoretical speed of usb 2.0 but why not.. its so easy to raid 0 whats the other option? ZFS? JBOD? the idea is to make it look like one big drive as opposed to multiple. so i think raid 0 works fine, especially since it doesn't take much to implement

[Darren Tilley @ Apr 2nd 2008 1:00PM]

It is eSATA. As well as Firewire 400/800 and USB 2.0.

[trev @ Apr 2nd 2008 6:47PM]

With raid 0 you lose all of your data if just one drive fails, so while it may offer a higher capacity it is less reliable than a single drive.

[Grant @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:40PM]

i find it interesting that WD thinks it's appropriate to charge like 1/3rd more of the price just to add some firewire connections or eSATA. If you look at the prices between the essential editions of these, they are usually a hell of a lot cheaper and just lack a few more connectivity options.

i mean hell, the only difference between essentials and premium is firewire($40 difference in 500GB model), and the only difference between premium and studio is an added eSATA port, but they only charge like $7 for that and the silver finish.

[Grant @ Apr 2nd 2008 12:42PM]

forgive my rant a bit, but i didn't realize that with this model they were pushing it as a RAID back-up, which makes the jacked price a little more swallowable.

[Carnaval13 @ Apr 2nd 2008 4:59PM]

Also it looks like this new drive has a 5 year warranty.

[IT-Accountant @ Apr 2nd 2008 1:07PM]

Ah. thanks.

[AlexanderK @ Apr 2nd 2008 1:39PM]

No NES?

[AlexanderK @ Apr 2nd 2008 2:07PM]

sorry, I meant NAS.

[John @ Apr 2nd 2008 3:10PM]

No NES is also a big minus

[Carnaval13 @ Apr 2nd 2008 4:59PM]

For NAS, WD has another product called My Book World Edition 1TB or 2TB - with 2 drives RAID 0/1.

[AlexanderK @ Apr 2nd 2008 5:14PM]

Yeah, but it has a circle instead of a strip in the center =)
Kinda want a strip =)

[John @ Apr 2nd 2008 1:58PM]

I have a few WD MyWhatever drives and they are loud as hell

[TheSpecialist @ Apr 3rd 2008 8:38AM]

These use GreenPower drives which are less noisy.

[Carnaval13 @ Apr 2nd 2008 7:08PM]

Looks like all the new mybook drives are fan-less
http://wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=410

[m @ Apr 19th 2008 4:37PM]

My Books /never/ had fans.

[trumpton @ Apr 2nd 2008 3:25PM]

Nice. But a bit chunky, no?

[John @ Apr 2nd 2008 4:30PM]

I am waiting for the 2TB wireless thumb drive.

[bud67 @ Apr 2nd 2008 4:53PM]

These drives are not that great. They spin down all the time and have to spend precious time waiting for them to spin back up to get working again.

[Loneguitarist @ Apr 2nd 2008 6:20PM]

Since it's quad interface, does anyone know what would happen if it was plugged into 2 computers, i.e. 1 by usb and 1 by firewire?

[DeadPixel @ Apr 2nd 2008 6:41PM]

I really want a 1TB drive. ive already got a 120gb my book and its really good

[polak @ Apr 3rd 2008 1:48AM]

If its anything like the mybook world edition then these "book"' are slow. When using my WD mybook on a 1GBit connection I have transfer speeds of 3-6% of 1GBit so only ~60Mbit/s (7mb/s). Because of this I put together a server from some old computer parts, and I now enjoy a NAS with a speed of 30% which works out to be 300Mbit/s or 37.5mb/s. If you need performance then stay away from WD's mybook products.

[Seymore @ Apr 3rd 2008 7:50AM]

My current WD serves part time as a noisy leaf blower!

[DigitalHappyMeal @ Apr 4th 2008 8:40PM]

I have the 1 tb version of this.

it comes formatted for mac. great..

.... took about 30 minutes of pounding my head into the desk to realize that.

theres actually a step by step in the printed manual on how to format it to NTFS
(in case you didn't already know.. I didn't)

the whole green power thing is great, I'm all for power saving.
but it seems to be a narcoleptic
it just sleeps whenever the fuck it wants

and when i need a file in a jiffy it's like .... "Dave's not here man"
"what drive? never heard of him"

wich leads to constant pressing of the confusing "do I hold down or press once" power button on the back.

there seems to be no way to make it full performance mode all the time.
even after changing the obvious setting that would keep it on all the time in policies.

at the end of the day it does look sexy, and is A terrabye. I'm not bitching for $299 either

but might mount it internally to keep it more active

[rookwood @ Apr 13th 2008 12:01PM]

"...beautiful"...? IMO, the LaCie units are the best looking of the lot. Unfortunately, I've been researching 1TB units for some time and can't find any with at least a 50% user approval rating. First, I'm not a Mac user (Vista), so most likely my options are greater. I really, really like the LaCie but the ratio of positive to negative user reviews being posted are terribly out of balance. But I suppose this goes for all the external hard drives or I wouldn't be on this site researching after 6 months of agonizing. I can live with the financial loss of replacement, I cannot live with losing my work.

I'm a lot about style, but this unit sucks in the style category. However, I could give it some points for the MAC matching finish...if I had a MAC. This may happen sooner than I'd have imagined a year or so ago. With the Intel/Windows marriage, I've gotten over the proprietary thing. Now Apple just needs to get their pricing in line. Way too much premium for the MAC OS.