The Western Digital My Book Studio 3TB external hard drive is a simple solution for backing up data from your pre-2011 Mac via FireWire. If you've got a newer Mac you can use USB 2.0, but we'd wait for a Thunderbolt enclosure on those devices. Find an external hard drive with RAID for data protection, backup software or super-fast USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt technology to back up photos and digital media. Western Digital announced today that it is now shipping the 3TB version of the popular My Book Studio for Mac. This is the single-volume drive, not to be confused with the company's dual-volume.
Western Digital's My Book Studio is a 2TB external hard drive supporting FireWire 800 and USB 2.0. It is designed primarily for Mac users, although it can be used on Windows platforms after a reformat.
The My Book Studio has a similar design to previous My Book hard drives such as the Essential and Home editions. The only significant changes are a smart display screen, a Mac-inspired paintjob and a smaller, less irritating activity light.
Like other models in the My Book range, the drive is aesthetically pleasing, sporting the 'brushed metal' look that you often find on Mac products.
Unlike the MyBook Studio Edition II which came with two mirrored 3.5in hard drives in an unfashionably obese enclosure, this model comes with a single drive (a WD Caviar Green).
The My Book Studio is relatively light (1.18kg) considering the amount of storage space crammed inside it. The 2TB drive (1.98GB readable on Mac OS) is quoted by Western Digital as having the capacity to store 400,000 digital photos, 500,000 songs or 240 hours of 720p/1080i high-definition video. At 15 cents per formatted gigabyte, the WD My Book Studio 2TB is a decent buy.
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Western Digital has taken the liberty of bundling WD SmartWare backup software with the drive, which is the company's answer to Apple Time Capsule. WD SmartWare is packed with plenty of advanced options, yet it remains easy to use thanks to the intuitive interface.
We were also pleased by the other features the device offered, including a sleep timer and 256-bit hardware-based encryption.
The WD My Book Studio 2TB allows you to personalise the display screen with your own labelling. This is sure to come in handy for users who own multiple My Book enclosures. The display screen also shows a storage capacity gauge, which is very convenient.
Performance
To assess the My Book Studio's transfer speeds, we used a 27in iMac running Snow Leopard 10.6. Our test files include a 3GB batch of 1MB files, as well as a folder of larger 3-4GB files totalling 19.4GB.
During our storage benchmarking tests, the enclosed WD Caviar Green performed well using FireWire 800 as a connection. However, we were a little disappointed with its USB 2.0 transfer speeds — probably due to our recent acquaintance with the USB 3.0 My Book Studio Edition.
When running our 3GB 'small file' benchmark with FireWire 800, the drive finished up at an impressive 49 seconds with a steady read speed of 61 megabytes per second. During our 19.4GB 'large file' benchmark, it had the job done at 4 minutes and 25 seconds, with an average read of 75MBps.
USB 2.0 however, had us hanging around for a tedious 14 minutes during the 'large file' bench and took 4 minutes to move 3GB.
In all tests, the drive maintained an average power consumption of 8.9 Watts, slightly higher than its idle consumption of 6.1W. We were pleased at the fact that the drive remained silent during file transfers.
Considering the My Book Studio just emerged on the market, it has a reasonable price -- and you definitely get what you pay for.
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The Western Digital My Book Studio 3TB external hard drive is a simple solution for backing up data from your pre-2011 Mac via FireWire. If you've got a newer Mac you can use USB 2.0, but we'd wait for a Thunderbolt enclosure on those devices.
WD My Book Studio: Design and setup
The WD My Book Studio matches the latest crop of Mac desktops and notebooks — the iMac, the unibody MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini — with its brushed-aluminium finish. We're a big fan of this look — it's understated and quietly stylish and extremely scratch resistant. We carried the My Book Studio in a backpack with its power adapter in the same compartment, and the few surface scratches it sustained were easy to rub off with a damp cloth.
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There are no fancy screens on the My Book Studio, with only a single white LED on the enclosure's front. It flickers brightly when the drive is in use, and turns off when the My Book Studio enters its low-power standby mode. In this mode, the hard drive spins down, saving power and silencing the device — the only downside is a wait time of around 8.5 seconds when you start accessing the My Book Studio again.
The enclosure's rear has two FireWire 800 ports — one direct connection and one to daisy-chain another device — and a USB 2.0 port using a mini-USB connector. Any Mac up to the end of 2010 or thereabouts will be spoilt with the high speeds from FireWire 800, and every other Mac or PC can use the USB 2.0 connection instead. Of course, Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 would be preferable, but we expect a bit more of a wait until these connectors are common.
Wd My Book Studio 3tb External Hard Drive For MacWD My Book Studio: Performance
The WD My Book Studio is available in 1TB, 2TB and 3TB flavours, with corresponding prices of $179.99, $229.99 and $299.99. We think the 3TB is actually the best deal: the amount of storage space is immense for a single drive, and the price really isn't too far off buying a Western Digital 3TB internal drive and cheap FireWire 800 enclosure. The drive is HFS+ formatted and so will only read and write on Mac OS X. You can easily re-format the drive to NTFS for Windows use, but this is another step for new and possibly amateur users to undertake.
We tested the WD My Book Studio by half-filling it with data and then transferring 13GB of files back and forth from a mid-2010 MacBook Pro (with a third-party 120GB SSD installed) over FireWire 800. We were able to transfer 13GB of files from the MacBook Pro to the My Book Studio in 3min 12.3sec. Reading 13GB of files from the My Book Studio to the Mac took 3min 29.3sec. Both tests were averaged over three successive runs.
These transfer times translate into raw speeds of 69.3MB/sec for write and 63.7MB/sec for reading files — more than fast enough for any average user's needs, and fast enough to deal with the demands of video or photo editing software suites. We haven't tested the USB 2.0 speed of the WD My Book Studio 3TB yet, but we expect figures of around 40MB/sec for both read and write.
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The Western Digital My Book Studio 3TB external drive is quiet, fast and has plentiful storage. Its reasonable price tag makes it an easy-to-recommend choice for any Mac user looking to boost storage capacity with an all-in-one device.
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