I am not ready to give a full-blown review of the My Book Studio Edition Western Digital External Hard Drive that I just purchased for my Apple MacBook Pro, but I wanted to put some information out there for others looking to purchase a FireWire 800 external hard drive that is pre-formatted for the Mac. My Book Studio Edition does support USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 if you want to punish yourself with slower speeds. For those who want the highest performance and have an eSata card for your Mac, My Book Studio Edition supports that as well. FireWire 800 is sufficient enough performance for me, being about double the speed of USB 2.0, so Firewire 800 is what I am using.
Anyway, you can read all those specifications on the Western Digital website or those pathetic e-zine websites that pretend to review hardware and software, but really just regurgitate the manufacturers information. Man are they a waste of time.
Here is the skinny on the My Book Studio Edition hard drive that I picked up the other day from a local retailer. First, save yourself a few bucks and buy it online. I only like buying it at a local retailer, because if the external hard drive indeed doesn't work or is not what I expected, it is usually easier to get a refund at the store. I have 14 days to haul this back and get a total refund - no questions asked :)
When I opened the hard drive box there was a very ominous blue card staring at me telling me to visit the Western Digital Support Website about Mac OS X Leopard Support. The blue card mentions a particular article in their knowledge base. This is never a good sign. Apparently the software on the My Book hard drive does not support Leopard, so don't waste your time installing it. You need to download the updated software on the Wester Digital website. But wait, in that article in the knowledge base is a link to a firmware update that you should install first. In fact, if you did accidentally install the old software on the hard drive first, you will need to uninstall it before installing the new Firmware. So basically, the My Book Studio Edition hard drive in the box is pretty worthless as is for Mac OS X Leopard. Make sure you pay attention to that little blue card and head over to the Western Digital website to download and install the necessary updated firmware and software.
If you are computer saavy this really isn't that big of a deal - just a hassle really. However, I picture somebody not so computer literate having to do this when all they expected was a plug-n-play external hard drive formatted for the Mac to use with Time Machine and Leopard. Good luck. In the end it only took me about 30 minutes to get this all up and running.
Time Machine automatically detects the drive and asks you if you want to use it for backups. I assume this works, but I thought I would try out the WD Anywhere Backup, which is Western Digital's backup software. Here is the kicker. The product key for the software is a label that is stuck to the instructions. Many people don't notice that little sticker with the WD Anywhere Backup Product Key and think they are only getting a 30 day trial of WD Anywhere Backup. You get a full licensed copy. It is just not obvious that the product key is attached to the installation instructions, since it is small and not so noticeable.
WD Anywhere Backup does real-time file monitoring of those areas of your hard-drive that you tell it to monitor. If it detects any file changes, it immediately backs it up. I am not sure I like this as it may keep the hard-drive running all day long, especially if you ask it to back up application preferences, which could literally change all day. I let it do this for awhile and watched the growl notifications. After about almost a day of this I paused the backup plan just to see if when I restarted it if it would then backup all the pending changes. I haven't restarted the backup plan yet, so I will wait for another day to mention the results. In the end I may switch to Time Machine, but I always like to try other tools.
Other than the crazy firmware and software updates, I rather like the My Book Studio Edition. It is about the size of a book, fairly quiet but there is a noticeable hum, and the hard drive doesn't get hot. It has the same aluminum finish as the MacBook Pro so it looks nice. It does have a fairly bright light in the front that glows when it is working or even sleeping, but I really don't notice it much. I suppose if you use this in your bedroom and leave it on it might be annoying. It doesn't have that loud annoying clicking I hear on some of my older Western Digital Hard Drives during file transfers which is nice.
I will report on the external hard drive again in about a week. If this works out well in the long run, I was thinking about getting a second My Book Studio Edition to backup my backup :)
You can learn more about the My Book Studio Edition hard drive from Western Digital here. They have a My Book Studio Edition II if you need a larger drive.
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