| | |  | Office Supplies | Home » » Western Digital My Book Studio II - 2 TB (2 x 1 TB) USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive WDH2Q20000N | | | | | | | Description: | | Fast, Green and Mac Ready.Quad interface, RAID-enabled, about 30% less power consumption, formatted for Mac. The My Book Studio Edition II treads lightly on the earth and carries big performance for creative professionals. 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. (* Based on comparison between a 1 TB dual-drive system using 7200 RPM drives and a 1 TB dual-drive system using WD's GreenPower drives.) 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. User serviceable - Want to upgrade a drive? Simply open the case and replace the existing drive - no screwdriver needed. 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.) 5-year limited warranty. Ideal for: Smooth video editing, rendering complex 3D objects or special effects and saving huge blocks of data in record time. | | | Features: | |
• Box Contents - Dual-drive storage system, FireWire 800 cable, FireWire 800 to 400 cable, USB cable, AC adapter, Software CD, Quick Install Guide
• Lightning-fast FireWire 800 combined with RAID 0 yields the speed you need for smooth video editing, rendering complex 3D objects or special effects
• WD's GreenPower drives, this system uses about 30% less energy than standard systems and runs quietly because it doesn't need a fan
• 2TB = 2000GB Hard Drive Capacity
• Pre-configured to RAID 0 (Striped)
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 8.75 inches | | Product Width:
| 7.75 inches | | Product Height:
| 8.75 inches | | Product Weight:
| 5.95 pounds | | Package Length:
| 8.7 inches | | Package Width:
| 8.5 inches | | Package Height:
| 7.7 inches | | Package Weight:
| 6.5 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 153 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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 Immediate failure of an otherwise good product.Jul 25, 2010
Within 24 hours of bringing this product online, one of the two drives failed.
Fortunately I configured this as RAID 1. What a disaster if I had lost the 500 GB of data that I had transferred to the drive - would have been a truly irreplaceable loss.
The WD Drive Manager alerted me to the problem as drive A failed. Switched to Raid 0 HFS+ automatically. Then the whole array went down - power and all. Case was very warm to the touch. Couldn't get it to power up, thought it might be the power supply (it wasn't). Switched power cords, rebooted the array, drive B mounted Raid 1 HFS+ and WD Drive Manager reported that Drive A was degraded (later it reported Drive A has failed).
Can't believe this is due to anything except faulty manufacturing. This is the one failure WD gets. Another one and you're done WD.
Note that this product gets high marks without the failure. Plug-and-play easy to use, configuring the RAID 1 was simple, I was up and running in no time. The WD Drive Manager totally did its job.
But you can't have a mature product like these drives failing.
Amazon handled the exchange well. Shipping me the replacement drive next day, emailing me the RMA on the faulty drive. Prior to contacting Amazon I contacted WD for support. They were quite good too, but I'd have to take the case apart to replace the drive and it would take 3 days to ship me a new naked drive. Nah. And, trying to get the case apart was a hassle - no screws, and the support guy couldn't really help with how to pry it open without damaging the case (which I immediately did - damage the case - gave up on the prying it open).
iMac 3.06 GHz Core 2; 4 GB 1067; 500 GB; OSX 10.6.4; 4 TB external (and growing).
 Spins down a LOTJul 19, 2010
Doesn't matter how fast it is because it spins down a LOT, and does not appear to have a setting to turn that off. The spin ups cause constant lockup delays on the explorer.exe windows, even ones that have nothing to do with the drive.
Problem installing on a PCJul 13, 2010
With the enclosed CD, I could not get the drive to install on a PC. I tried three different PC's running three different versions of Windows--XP, Vista64, and Windows7-64. It appears that you need to have an internet connection so that Windows can look for some basic driver updates. (I do not leave my working computers on the internet except as necessary. I like to turn everything off that eats up bandwidth which is becoming more and more difficult since every software package now assumes you are always connected.) Once that happens, It will be recognized. The WD disk manager would not let me install it as anything other than a Raid 1 until I updated the disk manager. The disk with the drive was over a year old and the updated version almost as old. (Thank you very much WD for wasting a couple hours of my time trying to figure out these issues). The last time I bought an Apple formatted drive (2-3 years ago), I did not have these problems.
One other issue is that for the first 75% of a drive speeds were goog 70 to 90 from one esata drive to another. But once the drive was about 3/4 full, downloads began to get slower and slower down to USB speeds and lower. I have three of these drives and this happened with the first two drives. The third drive I partitioned into two logical drives. If that solves this problem, I will update this review once I have filled a partition. If any one has any idea as to why this happened, please add a review.
What I am doing is consolidating a large number of photos, both raw and working. Some of the working files are in the 2 to 3 gigabyte range, so large drives are quite handy. So I have spent three days transferring files from 8 other external drives with two more drives to go. I probably will need a fourth drive.
I am concerned about the heat issues because I will run at least one of these drives all the time since I work off external drives rather than internal drives. The Green issue is important since we are off-grid and run off solar panels. With the newer laptops we have returned to a laptop as the main computer due to the lower power consumption. I prefer external drives so something like a Drobo since I only have to turn on the drives I am using (or would I still be better with a Drobo next drive update time?).
Despite all the improvements in Windows, installing some things seems to be about as hard as it was 15 years ago.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Great for iTunes on a Mac running OSX LeopardJun 28, 2010
I chose this disc as it is pre-formatted for Mac (HFS+) and the RAID configuration can be easily setup in OSX Leopard.
I run 10.5.8 and this is the only box I could find that had Leopard supported on the box (others said 10.4.x up and I didnt want to risk it). The Firewire 800 interface was the clincher.
My 460gb iTunes library grew too big for my dedicated 500gb external firewire drive. I had it backed up on an identical disc but that meant erasing the backup and copying files for 6 hours every week which was a real pain. The discs were about 3 years old as well so time for replacements. A RAID seemed like the logical solution.
Installation was a breeze: Simply install the WD Drive Manager Software, plug in the disc and thats it. I changed the default RAID 0 to RAID 1 with a couple of clicks and got the extra security.
I have used Buffalo discs for years and I looked at Buffalo QUAD but they only had USB connection (&eSATA which is not supported on my iMac) and the Buffalo DUO - but that had only USB and Firewire 400. The RAID config can only be changed in Windows unfortunately and they come pre-formatted for windows too.
I invested a lot of $ on iTunes and feel more secure having the RAID. I will back it up with Time Machine. From experience the more backups you have the better!
0 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Simply doesnt work with iMacJun 28, 2010
I recently bought a Western Digital My Book Studio II 2 TB version for its RAID 1 and 0 config. But I am unhappy that this device works only on Western Digital drives. Nobody mentioned about this to me earlier, I must consider it to be a slip. The manual does not have all the details about this product. I need tech assistance for most of the issues because of the insufficient documentation. Glad that I did the RAID configuration all by myself and I have never done this before. This is the only simple thing. When I tried to connect it to my iMac, it simply did not recognize this hard drive. Is there a way it will work on an iMac? I now use it on my Windows PC but I prefer it on my iMac.
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