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|  | |  | | | Western Digital My Book Studio 2 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 800/400, Desktop External Hard Drive | | | | | | | |
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ELA457589 | | In Stock | | Availability:
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| | Features | Pure performance for Mac with FireWire 800Customizable e-labelAutomatic, continuous backupPassword protection and 256-bit encryption
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| | Description | See your life safe in one place with WD’s My Book Studio external drive for Mac. It’s the high-performance answer to your storage needs with an innovative e-label to personalize your drive and easily archive media collections; visual, automatic, continuous backup software, and effortless file retrieval. The FireWire 800 interface lets you save and access data at top speed, and password protection and 256-bit hardware-based encryption helps keep your digital life safe. Compatible with Apple TimeMachine. | |
| | Product Details | | Product Length: | 5.3 inches | | Product Width: | 1.9 inches | | Product Height: | 6.5 inches | | Product Weight: | 2.6 pounds | | Package Length: | 8.0 inches | | Package Width: | 7.1 inches | | Package Height: | 5.5 inches | | Package Weight: | 3.3 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 93 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 93 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
303 of 314 found the following review helpful:
 Smartware on drive is intrusive, not defeatable Dec 14, 2009
By dosers
"dosers"
Having always liked Western Digital Quality, I purchased a few of these drives - and was horrified to learn that WD has chosen to pre-install a large suite of largely useless 'SmartWare' on the drive.
The problem is, it's not defeatable; it takes up disk space, but is activated in Flash - so no way to get rid of it. It robs you of a drive letter (in windows) or a drive on Mac OS X - again, without a way to get rid of it.
After weeks of complaining by users, WD issues a 'VCD' utility that allows you to 'hide' it (but not get rid of it); the zinger is that the current drives need updated firmware to run VCD - and WD has NOT published the firmware updater for Studio drives yet, hence making the former utility useless.
All in all a bad experience, a drive marred by mad design, and I for one will no longer purchase WD until they reverse this strategy of spyware on a drive that cannot be overridden. From the feedback everywhere, I assume they will get the message.
UPDATED:
The new 'info' WD had Amazon add to the line (visit support to hide VCD) is NOT true; the support site ONLY has updates for the Elite and Essential, but NOT for the Studio line yet. That means, the updater won't work, as the firmware updater required has still not been released. Check it yourself on their site; very, very poor support and misleading post
112 of 113 found the following review helpful:
 Intrusive Software Detracts from a Great Product Dec 28, 2009
By Lon J. Seidman
"lon401"
Let me echo the thoughts of some of the other reviewers here: The addition of the 'smartware' in such an intrusive way is not Mac-like and completely unnecessary. I did see the mandatory virtual CD disappear after I installed the smartware software on my Mac, but having to install anything to use an external hard drive is completely inexcusable. Western Digital loses two stars on this 'feature' alone.
Once installed, the included smartware software adds an equally unnecessary menu bar icon that does nothing but take up system resources. I was able to remove it from loading by going into user settings under system preferences and removing it from my startup items.
FEATURES & OPERATION
Beyond the major software flaw, this is a good external storage device. There are few first party firewire 800 drives directed at Mac users, so this drive might be attractive for those looking for an easy solution to adding a high-speed time machine backup drive to their system. It is also compatible with Firewire 400 and USB 2.0.
Western Digital gets points for including all the cables you'll need. A Firewire 800 cable, an 800 to 400 adapter, and a USB 2.0 cable are included in the box.
The drive has an e-ink display (similar to that of the Kindle) that details the remaining drive capacity. The display works even when the device is powered off. It unfortunately will not work until the smartware software is installed.
Transfer speed is decent and certainly faster than USB 2.0, although my first time machine backup of 600+ gigs took over five hours.
The silicon feet at the bottom are springy and make it very unstable when positioned upright. A simple nudge is enough to tip it over. I have mine safely lying flat on my desk.
CONCLUSION
External hard drives are a dime a dozen these days. I don't blame Western Digital for trying to differentiate themselves in a rather bland marketplace, but the heavy handed software installation is unnecessary.
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PROs:
A decent, fast drive in an attractive enclosure
All cables are included
Competitively priced
CONs
Heavy handed software installation that is difficult to remove
Drive prone to toppling over when standing vertically
E-ink display doesn't work until software is installed
67 of 70 found the following review helpful:
Beware SmartWare Dec 03, 2009
By Anthony D'Atri
"Anthony11"
The drive out of the box presents both a normal disk and a goofy 215MB SmartWare "virtual CD" to the OS, so the latter clutters your desktop, finder, and chooser panels. Reports are conflicting wrt whether this space is taken from disk (as I suspect), or if it's actually flash hidden inside the enclosure on the interface board.
Various articles on the web talk about disabling the SmartWare "virtual CD" and point to a WD web page that advises that one update firmware, then run a Virtual CD Manager utility that can be downloaded from them. Unfortunately, the available firmware update only applies to Essential and Elite (sic) units, not these Studio models, and the Virtual CD Manager utility reports that a firmware update is required to use it -- yet WD confirms that none is available.
OSX reports for the disk:
Total Capacity : 1.8 TB (1,999,696,297,984 Bytes)
and for the volume:
Mount Point : /Volumes/My Book Capacity : 1.8 TB (1,999,562,039,296 Bytes)
Format : Mac OS Extended (Journaled) Available : 1.8 TB (1,999,158,603,776 Bytes)
Owners Enabled : No Used : 384.7 MB (403,435,520 Bytes)
Number of Folders : 9 Number of Files:62
There's no reason to believe that this virtual CD is anything more than an annoyance, but purchasers may wish to find the previous generation disk which doesn't suffer from it, until/unless WD releases a fix.
66 of 72 found the following review helpful:
 Concerns about the software and virtual CD are unfounded Jan 14, 2010
By Brian Webster
Just received the drive. Hooked it up with Firewire to my iMac running OsX 10.6 Snow Leopard. Set up was a breeze -- I just plugged it in and connected to computer according to the instructions enclosed with the drive and it was ready to use. My iMac automatically recognized it and I was ready to use it in about 1 minute flat.
As some reviewers have noted, when the drive is connected a virtual CD icon appears on the desktop. I installed the WD software on this virtual drive in order to personalize the display on the front of the drive. The software interface is very nice and very user-friendly. However, I have not run the backup software because I elected to use Time Machine to do my backups. Time Machine backed up to the drive with no problems.
I was concerned about the virtual CD referred to by some other reviewers because I also don't like to clutter up my desktop with icons. However, I was pleased to find that removing this virtual CD is very straightforward. Just click on the WD icon that appears in the menu bar of the Finder, and select "Unmount CD" The virtual CD icon disappears and can be made to reappear at any time by clicking on the same icon and selecting "Mount CD". There is no need to download any software to do this, and no problem doing this with the My Book Studio, contrary to some previous reviews!
The drive itself feels solid. The housing is plastic, but it looks good and does not feel cheap. The drive is also fairly quiet -- certainly quieter than the Maxtor One Touch external drive that this drive has replaced -- and I like the energy saver features.
Overall I am very happy with my purchase so far and can reassure any readers out there that there is no reason to be concerned about the software or the virtual CD.
15 of 15 found the following review helpful:
Works and Looks Good. Jan 04, 2010
By E. J Tastad
"ejt"
UPDATE: There is new software available for this drive that lets you completely eliminate the virtual CD. Great for those that don't like it popping up all the time. The drawback is that the virtual CD is required for drive encryption.
Pros:
Fast Firewire 800 Works with most Macs
Sleek Design
Unique Status Display
Works well, low power, low heat, and well ventilated
Cons:
Intrusive WD SmartWare software
Plastic construction instead of Aluminum
Verdict:
This hard drive works flawlessly, so I gave it 5 stars despite the intrusive software. A nice external hard drive with some unique features, but the intrusive software might bother some users. There aren't a lot of choices for Firewire 800 drives for mac users, and this is certainly a sound offering with about twice the performance of the USB 2.0 connection.
Performance:
Doing some file writes by dragging large files and folders to the HDD, the USB 2.0 write times averaged about 35 MB/s and the Firewire 800 transfer times were about 63 MB/s, so it is definitely worth using Firewire 800 over USB 2.0. Power consumption is low and the drive is reasonably quite. It has no loud fans, but you do hear regular hard drive noises.
Usage:
Why is the software intrusive? WD decided to use a "virtual CD" that mounts whenever the hard drive is mounted. Also, use of their WD SmartWare program is required to use the drive. They do provide a tool to disable their software on some drives, but that doesn't work on the My Book Studio drive.
The drive was easy to setup and came pre-formatted as OS X Journaled. All I had to do is change a couple settings so the WD SmartWare software wouldn't open every time the drive mounted and change the label on the display on the drive to what I wanted. I use it as a Time Machine drive, which is setup by running Time Machine and selecting the My Book drive as the backup drive.
See all 93 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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