Wd My Book Studio 2tb For Mac

Posted on  by 

Today's Best Tech Deals

Picked by Macworld's Editors

Top Deals On Great Products

Picked by Techconnect's Editors

  • Western Digital My Book Studio 2TB

ABLEGRID Car DC Adapter For WD My Book Elite Mac Studio WD SmartWare HD Hard Drive DA-24B12 AC.ADS-24P-12-2 1224G.ADS-24S-12 1224GPCU.WA-24C12U.S018BU1200150 WD Part#:WDPS034RNN Model #: 4800ABA112. WD My Book Studio 2TB Mac External Hard Drive Storage Price Starts from Rs. 48596 The best price for WD My Book Studio 2TB Mac External Hard Drive Storage Price is Rs. 48596 at Amazon.in. The price list was fetched from top online stores in India and was last refreshed on 14 Nov 2018. MyBook Studio Studio Edition II 2TB keeps disconnecting. WD External Drives. I’ve got 4 My Book Studio Edition II 2TB - 3 at work and one at home. ALL of them have the same problem. I just picked up a 2TB “MyBook Mac” WD HD a couple of weeks ago. I switched off the VCD thing from mounting on my Mac. Transferring files went fine.

Compact and light enough to easily fit in a backpack or briefcase, Western Digital’s My Book Studio external hard drive is a cute little bugger. Designed to resemble a book, the 6.5-inch tall drive stands upright, and you have the option of digitally labeling your drive (with 12 characters or less) so it’ll read like a title on the binding a book.

Designed specifically for a Mac, this plug-in-and-go drive is compatible with Apple’s TimeMachine software and has two FireWire 800 ports and one USB 2.0 port, with cables for both included. The drive is relatively quiet, with its ventilation system sitting up top, and its plastic build keeps the unit lightweight at 2.6 pounds. Unfortunately, its plastic casing also makes the unit a little less durable than aluminum drives, and when we received our My Book Studio, it came with a little bulge in the backside that we had to physically snap back into place.

One of the biggest complaints I had about the My Book Studio was its fickle power button, which made it very unclear whether I should either press and release the power button quickly, or hold for a few second and wait, in order to turn the drive on and off. Either way seemed to work (or not work, rather) and because its tiny LED light had a few seconds lag time to indicate when the unit was turned on, I resorted to becoming the hard drive whisperer: experimenting with button pushing wait times as I nestled my ear against the My Book Studio to hear the drive spinning for startup.

When I did manage to power on the My Book Studio, it performed well in our hard drive tests. Transferring a 1GB file took 42 and 34 seconds through a USB and FireWire 400 (using a FireWire 800 to FireWire 400 cable), respectively. Duplicating the same file took an average of 1 minute, 10 seconds using USB, and 55 seconds using FireWire 400. In our low-memory Photoshop tests, the drive timed in at 1 minute, 24 seconds for USB, and 1 minutes, 3 seconds for FireWire 400. When we tested the My Book Studio using FireWire 800, all three tests clocked in less than 45 seconds: transferring our 1GB file took 22 seconds, copying the file averaged about 32 seconds, and our Photoshop test was completed in 43 seconds.

Our AJA system tests, which mimics writing a full scale, high quality, 2GB HD video file that is 2GB with a video frame size of 1920-by-1080 and 10-bit RGB, yielded 28.1MBps for writes and 37.1MBps for reads through USB. With FireWire 400, the write and read speeds were 27.6MBps and 33.7MBps, respectively. With FireWire 800, the write speed was 60.1MBps, while the read speed was 54.6MB/ps.

Timed trials

Copy 1GB file to USB 2.00:42
Copy 1GB file to FireWire 4000:34
Copy 1GB file to FireWire 8000:22
Duplicate 1GB file via USB 2.01:10
Duplicate 1GB file via FireWire 4000:55
Duplicate 1GB file via FireWire 8000:32
Low-memory Photoshop: USB 2.01:24
Low-memory Photoshop: FireWire 4001:03
Low-memory Photoshop: FireWire 8000:43

Scale = Minutes: Seconds

Wd My Book Studio 2tb For Mac

AJA tests

Passport
WriteRead
USB28.1MBps37.1MBps
FireWire 40027.6MBps33.7MBps
FireWire 80060.1MBps54.6MBps
Mac

How we tested. We ran all tests with the drive connected to a Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz Xeon with Mac OS X 10.5 installed and 1GB of RAM. We tested the drive with each available port. We copied a folder containing 1GB of data from our Mac's hard drive to the external hard drive to test the drive's write speed. We then duplicated that file on the external drive to test both read and write speeds. We also used the drive as a scratch disk when running our low-memory Adobe Photoshop CS3 Suite test. This test is a set of four tasks performed on a 150MB file, with Photoshop's memory set to 25 percent.—Macworld Lab testing by Lynn La

The drive also comes with its own software, called WD SmartWare, which mounts on your desktop when the drive is plugged into your Mac. Sometimes however, our Mac did not register SmartWare when our My Book was connected, though a few restarts of our computer were able to remedy this situation.

The SmartWare software has its benefits because it is a one-stop shop, a control center to customize all your My Book Studio’s capacity and security settings. You can choose your password and with its 256-bit hardware-based encryption, the drive will have an extra layer of protection from unwanted access. It is also a place where you can see the progress of your backup and the different categories of your drive’s content like music, photos, and movies, along with how much memory they are each respectively using.

SmartWare also allows you to customize your My Book Studio’s label, so you can name your drive something along the lines of “VIDEOS 09” or “HOME PICTURES” to remind you of what’s inside. The label itself uses e-paper technology, which does not require a backlight to illuminate pixels like most flat panel displays. Instead, it reflects light like paper, and because it uses no electricity to display its text, the label will remain displayed, regardless of whether your My Book Studio is plugged in. The label also shows the available storage capacity left on your drive and a padlock icon lets you know if it is secured.

Western Digital 2tb My Book

Macworld buying advice

At $250 for the 2TB model, Western Digital’s My Book Studio is a decent hard drive for all your casual storing needs. Although the confusing power button is something I find worth griping about, its nifty labeling feature and easy to navigate SmartWare software make up for it. Also, its decent results times and environmentally conscious elements definitely make the My Book worth putting on your shelf.

Wd My Book Studio 2tb For Mac

[Lynn La is a Macworld staff editor.]

Wd My Book Studio Power Supply

Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.

Mac Wd

  • Western Digital My Book Studio 2TB

    Cons

    • Fickle power button

Coments are closed