Western Digital My Book Studio 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800, Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAJ0010HSL-NESN

Reviews of Western Digital My Book Studio 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800, Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAJ0010HSL-NESN

1.) Concerns about the software and virtual CD are unfounded
Reviewed by: Brian Webster
Rating:
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.

2.) Excellent Drive
Reviewed by: D. J. Hampton
Rating:
Very impressed with this drive. After reading an online review, became very interested in the drive. I have used Western Digital drives for years to back up my media on my mac. Last year I bought a mac mini and set it up as a HTPC. For the last month I have been digitizing my 200+ DVD movie library, converting the vids to H.264 using an El Gato Turbo, and saving them to the external drive to use with Plex. I filled up my previous 500 GB drive pretty quickly. The speed of this drive over my previous Firewire 400 drive is unbelievable. I now have my iTunes library, my iPhoto/Aperture library, and my movies all on one drive. Bought a 2nd 2TB USB drive for back-ups and I am all good.

The e-ink label is very handy and easily customizable using the built in software.

Overall I will say that this continues my very positive Western Digital experiences I have had with their drives over the last 6 years. Strongly recommend you use your mac software.


3.) Works and Looks Good.
Reviewed by: ejt Marion, IA United States
Rating:
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.

4.) BRILLANT!
Reviewed by: Tarun Chachra Hillsborough, NJ
Rating:
The My Book has easily achieved design excellence coupled with superb functionality to deliver an outstanding product. This drive not only carries a killer look, sure to please all MAC fans, but also comes with everything you need for your backup scheme.

Included: Drive, Ac Adapter, Firewire 800 cable, USB to Mini USB Cable, and Firewire 400 to Firewire 800 adapter.

The included cables alone make this an attractive unit so that all connectivity options are available out of the box.

For the purpose of this review I used the drive on a Macbook Pro via Firewire 800.

Once the drive is mounted it shows up on the Mac as the My Book and you get an icon to launch the WD SmartWare application which allows you to do the following:

1. Back Up Files
2. Set Up Drive

1 - Back Up Files - Click on this and you are prompted to install the WD SmartWare software on your computer. Once the quick installation is done you are shwon a great graphical display of the contents on your MAC and the contents of the drive. I have uploaded an image that shows what the graphical display shows. Simply click on the Run Backup button and voila, your content is now being backed up to the drive and you are shown a live graphical display of its progress. The software automatically backs up all documents, mail, movies, music, pictures, and other data (which I believe are application files, etc).

2 - Set Up Drive - This portion of the SmartWare application allows you to label your drive so that you can see the name on the LCD display. What is really cool here is that even if you power down the drive and or put it on a shelf, the name still displays...AWESOME feature. Once the label is set you are asked to set the security of the drive with a password and a password hint. The security basically insures that no one but you can access your data. A warning is shown stating that the software cannot retrieve your password if you lose it and you must check off "I Understand" before you continue. Once security is complete you are prompted to register your drive with WD and asked if you wish to receive communication about updates etc...

Quick Note: The LCD display shows the name of your drive and the free space right on the front...no guess work needed.

The WD SMartWare software is a pleasure to use after setup in that it gives you the graphical display and ability to backup/restore etc on demand. You are also able to check for software updates from within the application. It also offers you the ability to change your settings/labels at any time. There is a Diagnostics section to run tests on the drive, if you experience problems. A Sleep Timer option allows you to adjust when the drives goes into standby mode. Finally you are given the ability to erase the entire drive and start over..if the need arises.

I think this is an excellent product and designed wonderfully with the user in mind. I have no harm in recommending this item and will do so... 5 STARS easily.

A quick note on backups: I am an IT person by trait and always recommend the 3-2-1 strategy. 3 Copies of all of your data, 2 on-site, and 1 off-site. A great way to always insure that you have what you need incase of a disaster. The WD My Book studio will make it easier with the LCD labels as you can use the date of the last backup on the drive. A quick piece of advice.

Please let me know if you have any questions via comments and I will answer them as best as I can. Thanks.

QUICK UPDATE: Smartware version 1.1.1.4 is included with the drive. The western digital website still shows 1.1.1.3 as the latest... Just an FYI.

5.) Very satisfied so far
Reviewed by: Harold W. Miller
Rating:
This is my seventh external hard drive. I now have three externals happily chugging along on my iMac (3.5 T total plus .25 T internal). My first cost around $500 and held 40 megabytes of data, mostly documents and applications. This Western Digital drive cost me $219 with no sales tax or shipping/handling and holds 2,000,000 megabytes of data--movies, music, pictures, and, yes, documents. In other words forty thousand times more data storage costing less than half the price--a lot less if you add inflation into the mix. Installation was a no brainer--the instructions had no words, just a picture of which plug to put into which port. I was up and running and transferring files from overstuffed smaller hard drives to this data barn in, maybe, five minutes. The uninstallable software that people have complained about isn't there. Either the software is was windows-specific of WD responded to the criticism by removing it. I prefer to add it later if I choose, even a few wasted megabytes of space is something I would want to avoid. The drive belies the enormity of the hard drive on the inside: it's a neat, upright silver with the LCD read-out on the front. It has an adequate number of ports and has all the major protocols being handled (except for the brand new USB 3.0). I see no minus so far and negatives. I do recommend using this because it does have e-SATA and firewire 800 ports which comes in handy transferring 600 gigabytes of files. I recommend this hard drive.

6.) Fast & Quiet
Reviewed by: Flavio Machado Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rating:
Very fast and quiet. The screen is very useful to identify each drive when you have more then one.

7.) No hassle
Reviewed by: ostawookiee Winston-Salem, NC USA
Rating:
Straight out of the box plugged it into my Macbook, Macbook asks "Do you want to use this drive to backup with Time Capsule?" answer yes and off it goes. No formatting necessary (already Mac Extended partition). A full backup (100GB for me) took about 90 mins the initial time (over the USB).

It comes with 3 connectors - USB 2.0, FireWire 800 (long cord), Firewire 800 (6-inch cord).

The small indicator light is nice - other drives I have use large and bright indicators I find distracting and annoying. Runs pretty quietly. This drive is way better than the Maxtor I have.

The display on the front is pretty useless. You can show the name of the drive - but unless you have a bank of these it doesn't seem like you'd need that. Mine doesn't even show the percentage full on it, so I think for that feature it requires you using their backup software.

There's no real directions in the box, just some warranty and "do not submerge" kind of information in horribly translated English. The documentation is on the drive in softcopy.

8.) Runs Quietly.
Reviewed by: A* New York, N.Y. United States
Rating:
I have gone through my fair share of drives from Segate to Iomega and have had a fair share of problems as well, the usual stutters and clunkers. So I waited as long as I could to review this product. I hate to back things up and lose it to a faulty drive and Western Digital isn't truly my brand of choice. But I have to admit, I love this drive! The Smart Display is great, telling you how much storage is left, capacity gauge, name and a drive lock indicator. I had a tacky tape label on my old drive and had to plug it in to see how much space was left. The indicators also aren't blindingly bright. On my older drives, you could light the Grand Canyon at midnight and I had a piece of electrical tape over them.

As for performance, the drive runs extremely quiet. I would say about as low key as my Macbook Pro. I haven't had one hiccup. It was a simple plug and use operation, no hassles.
A great drive with excellent features. And so far, has performed above my expectations.

9.) Great drive
Reviewed by: Dr. Stuart Cheshire San Jose, CA USA
Rating:
I've bought two of these fast FireWire 800 drives. The Virtual CD feature is an annoyance, but not a serious problem. The "digital paper" label, which shows the drive's name and free space even when the power is off, is a great idea, but it doesn't work unless you install their custom software on every computer. The moment you connect the drive to a computer without their custom software installed the drive doesn't know how much free space it has any more. It would be nice if the drive firmware were smart enough to know how much free space it has by itself, instead of requiring the host computer to tell it.

10.) Nice drive but useless software.
Reviewed by: S. Antonios
Rating:
Nice drive but useless software. Wish WD did not include it with all these drives.

11.) great storage
Reviewed by: James Walters
Rating:
great product, the software has been fixed that plagued people with backups. I have it set up on a mac mini as the mass storage for the house.

12.) Workin' Well so far....
Reviewed by: petealberts Eastern PA, United States
Rating:
I have a late '07 Alum, iMac which was running leopard. Apple, had replaced my Mouse once (scroll wheel). OK< scroll went AGAIN. but, so my HD (320GB) was starting to crap out. I noticed this on a Sunday, called Applecare, which I'm glad I have, (since the 'puter is 2.5 years old). After letting her cool down, she started right up again. So on AC's advice, I took the iMac to the Apple store. With Bad scroll wheel, bad 320 GB HD, and, I also mentioned the vertical streaks, in the lcd screen..... I thought I'd get laughed at.

Not so quick.
I went in, and talked it all over, I'm not as stupid as I sound, and knew what I needed to do, To Save My Data!! (LOTS of Legal stuff!)~~OK?

I bought this Western Digital 2 TB USB/FIREWIRE Studio Book. They put my iMac on the Genius Bar, connected it to the 800FW and the Studio Book. It took a few hours, to do a suddenly Brand New, Time Machine Backup.
BUT> DID IT? IT DID! WHEW~~~~!!!!!!!!!!!! Happy Me! Saved ALL my Data! Thank you Lord!
They handed my my new WD Book Studio (My Data), they don't wanna be responsible for it, and I don't blame 'em! Said, come back tomorry. They called me.
Here's what they did:

New HD, UP from a 320 GB, to a 500GB, loaded with Snow Leopard, AND/PLUS/INCLUDING/ALSO, all new iLife 09! I thought that's GREAT! And, it IS!
Then, since I did bitch a bit about the screen having the vertical stripes, they replaced THe LCD, and the GLASS! BEAUTIFUL!
I couldn't be happier, but, they also gave me another new Mighty Mouse!!
YEA!!!!!
Total Cost to AppleCare..... $989.00, like that...
Total cost to me? ZERO $.
I bought the WEstern Digital Book 2 TB, for about 289, like that, not the cheapest, but, I got to save ALL my data. They loaded it back onto my internal HD, which is now much bigger, and has Snow Leopard, rather than just leopard on it.

This was All done at Cherry Hill mall Store, in Cherry Hill, NJ!

I couldn't be happier with Apple's service, and their recommendation of the WD My Book 2 TB USB/4/800 Firewire external HD!

I'm still a Happy Apple Camper...
Since I raised my children, on an Apple IIgs.....

Yep~

Teach them on winders....?
I don't know what they'll turn to! (They'd need HS Counseling!)

Good Luck,


Buy Apple, and what they recommend!

Be Well!~

Pete

ASB

13.) Works well
Reviewed by: M. Eggleston
Rating:
I use this as backup storage from my Macbook Pro. The firewire 800 is quick.

14.) Small size super quiet
Reviewed by: Scott NJ
Rating:
Recently upgraded my computers HD to 1tb and wanted to also upgrade my backup drive to match it. The previous drive was Simpletech and was a 500gb, no problems at all, slim design but a bit noisier than this new WD. I'm using it on a Mac and it the WD was ready to go out of the box. It fits on my desk nicely and barely makes any sound. It doesn't get hot, the Sipmletech drive did get a little bit because it is in a plastic case whereas the WD is aluminum which adds to the dissipation of heat. I've had quite a few backup HD's over the years some good some not so good but so far this one exceeds my expectations and I totally feel safe with it.

The WD had an LCD display that tells you how much is used and free space left. It also can connect via USB, Firewire and comes with all the necessary cables too! It comes pre-loaded with "SmartWare software that walks you thru the steps to add additional configurations to the drive like password protection, encryption. You can customize the name of the drive without reformatting it. You will have to reformat it for windows because this one is pre done for mac.
Its definitely a solid drive for Mac users and I highly recommend it.

15.) Wow
Reviewed by: Santa New York
Rating:
Fast, easy, thinks for you, has fantastic documentation of what's in the drive, compact, super quiet. Works great with Time Machine.

Perfect.

16.) Dependable
Reviewed by: Tony
Rating:
Plenty of storage for all my Hd video backup. Works flawlessly with Time Machine. A great compliment to my original WD 500GB external.

17.) Works well, but needs help
Reviewed by: M. A. Yaffe Charlotte, NC
Rating:
I installed the WD last night and the system recognized it immediately. As a test I was able to drag and drop files with no problem. Looking good so far. Next came the test that I purchased the drive for: Time Machine. Time Machine recognized the drive immediately (running Snow Leopard on an iMAC). The full backup started running nicely then stopped after about 24gb with a message saying the drive had an error or had been ejected. It was still there in Finder and I was able to drag and drop files as before. I fired up the Time Machine backup again and off it went. It got past the previous error spot and backed up another 20gb or so then failed again.

After some searching I found Apple support article TS1550 that instructed me to erase and re-partition the drive using a GUID partition scheme. This was my first time to use Disk Utility and that seemed to fix the problem. I backed up about 250gb in what seemed about 90 minutes.

My next battle is that pesky WD Smartware that won't drop off Finder, even if ejected. Why do these hardware vendors think we want this stuff?

1/30/2009 update: How to remove the Virtual CD (VCD) on the Mac? see [...]


18.) Nice drive, but auto backup not as customizable as one would like
Reviewed by: Debra Hamel TwitterLit.com
Rating:
I'm using the My Book Studio external hard drive on a Mac running OS 10.6.2. The setup was simple. The drive comes with three cables--a USB cable, Firewire 800, and Firewire 800 to 400--so you're covered no matter what sort of connection you need. There's one caveat to that, though, which is that the 800 to 400 cable is incredibly short, just a couple inches long. I actually didn't try to use it. I had another 800 to 400 cable I used instead. But I would imagine that the length of the cable that came with the drive could be problematic for anyone forced to use it. Anyway, setup is a simple matter of connecting the drive to your computer's USB or Firewire port and plugging in the AC adapter. Then there's a setup application to run. The hard copy directions that come with the device are minimal, but a more comprehensive manual is available in a myriad language as a PDF. Still, you won't necessarily have to refer to the directions to set up the drive as it's all pretty self-explanatory.

The My Book drive offers several conveniences. The first is that there is a display on the front of the unit that tells you the name you've given the drive during setup and how much space is left on the drive. This is an e-ink display--which is what the Amazon Kindle uses to display text--which means that when the device is off the name will still appear: the device doesn't have to be plugged in for it to be labeled. This could be very convenient if you had a number of these devices and you were using them for storage. You could label them by content (Photographs, Movies, etc.), provided that each label isn't longer than 12 characters.

The second convenience is that the drive comes with software that allows you to backup files from your computer's hard disk automatically. In the case of the Mac, you can automatically backup only certain folders. These are the following folders from your Users folder: Documents, Music, Pictures, Movies, Mail (in your Library folder), and Other. In my experience "Other" seems to be most of the rest of the content of your User folder (but not necessarily all of it; this isn't clear to me yet). Once you select the folders you want to be backed up automatically (the default is all of the above) and run your first backup, subsequent backups will occur automatically. If you change a file in one of these folders, the backup will automatically update, so there's nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, the drive comes with software that allows you to monitor these backups. Move a file on your hard disk into one of your auto backup folders like "Documents," for example, and you'll see the drive go to work almost immediately backing it up.

In theory, this is a great way of automating backup of important files. My problem with it in practice is that the files you'll want automatically backed up won't necessarily be in those particular folders--Documents, Music, etc. And you can't select any other files/folders to auto backup. (Though of course you can back them up manually, by dragging and dropping them from your computer's hard drive to the external drive.) Also, of course, you can't auto backup automatically from another external hard drive connected to your computer. I've moved my photos and movies off of my computer's hard drive because the folders are just too big to keep there. They're on an another external hard drive that I have connected to my computer. It would be great if I could set them to automatically backup to the My Book drive, but I can't. So in practice the auto backup ability of the My Book software is of limited use to me, though I can see it being extremely useful for people who store their stuff primarily in those particular folders. (Mac users can try CrashPlan, the free version, to automatically backup selected files from their hard disk and external hard drives to a specified folder.)

Files backed up to the My Book drive automatically are not automatically removed from the drive if they're removed from the source folder. This is as it should be, since it's when files are accidentally removed from the source folder that you'll be looking for a stored copy. But just know that you'll have to clean up the external drive manually if you want to delete saved files.

The drive can also be used with Apple's Time Machine, and you can use both means of backup simultaneously. That is, Time Machine can backup to the drive and you can also have folders backing up automatically using the drive's software. Setting the My Book drive as the target drive for Time Machine was perfectly simple.

-- Debra Hamel


19.) Smartware doesn't ruin the experience
Reviewed by: Brian SF Bay Area, CA
Rating:
This is a great product that is unfortunately marred by the smartware that appears on your desktop. I have a 24" iMac and when i plug this in via FW800, it appears on my desktop as expected. The drive will go to sleep, but the shortcut will remain on my desktop, which is how I would want the drive to behave.

The smartware is an annoyance. It does not get in the way, it does not make the drive difficult to operated. You do not have to use it. But its in eyesore. But for a drive that works flawlessly, is super fast, has multiple interfaces and has the Western Digital build quality, i dont mind dealing with an extra icon on my desktop. That being said, I totally understand why many would be upset about it.

20.) SmartWare complaints addressed by updates
Reviewed by: Ezekiel Weeks Fort Collins, CO USA
Rating:
People rightly complain about the SmartWare software auto-mounting a virtual CD. However, if you take a few minutes to update to the latest firmware and SmartWare software, the virtual CD auto-mount can now be deactivated. A nuscience at first if you don't want the software.

Pro:
-Good build quality as expected from My Book family, extra volume in case ensures air cooling.
-Very quiet disk access.
-Screaming fast over FireWire 800. (Dual ports; I only tested one)
-All cables included: FireWire 800, 800 to 400 adapter, USB 2 mini
-Tiny activity LED unintrusive
-Hardware-based encryption available

Con:
-WALL WART! The AC adaptor isn't in the middle of the power line but right on the plug. Come on, it's 2010! I replaced a 2006 WD with this drive, and even *that* got the adaptor right. Not what I expect from a high-end external drive.
-Price premium over USB 2-only drives
-SmartWare a hassle to disable (though now can be done in ~10 minutes via updates)

21.) Quiet drive a little slow over firewire 800
Reviewed by: Advanced Photographer Tampa Florida
Rating:
This drive is very quiet and runs extremely cool. It took 5 hours to backup 225GB of data connected to firewire 800 on Mac Pro. THe smart-ware software initially did not show up on desktop or finder until reboot after back-up via time machine. Drive is a little slow compared to OWC drive I had used in the past.It really is plug & play on Mac simply asks if you want to use time machine. Say yes and you are on your way. Having smartware icon on desktop and finder is really not a problem. Simply eject it and it will not show up again until reboot. I just leave it there. It really is not in the way and I find the complaints about this nitpicking and really not an issue. The reason for 4 stars instead of two is the speed of the drive is slow compared to some others I have used. If you have a mac it is a nice drive for the price and is fast enough after the initial back-up.

22.) Fast, secure storage
Reviewed by: eyegor Northern Virginia
Rating:
Like many, I store lots of data on my computer. In order to protect the data from loss, I back it up to an external drive manually as well as using Time Machine. In the past, I've been frustrated by the slow transfer speed of USB drives. Although it's fairly fast for small files, USB begins dragging badly for very large data transfers such as video or photo libraries.

I was very happy to find the My Book Studio. It supports USB and Firewire 400/800 and has 256-bit encryption build in.

Setup was very easy. I installed the drive manager in just a few minutes, set the password and was ready to go quickly.

I like the capacity indicator on the front of the drive as well as the ability to make a custom label that shows up in the information display. Very cool.

The drive is very quiet and I don't hear it in operation. Transfer speeds over Firewire 800 are very good as well.

I will probably buy a couple more of these drives to store my video and digital photos.

23.) So far, so good
Reviewed by: Bob Vermont, USA
Rating:
I'm using this as an external video storage drive over Firewire 800 currently. Works fine, although I've found that the FW800 port connection isn't terribly secure and tends to come unplugged at the slightest touch, which under normal conditions isn't an issue, but it can get pretty annoying when moving it around. Also, the front text is fairly useless to me, since I'm not using WD's software to manage it on my Mac under OS 10.5.

I purchased this while it was on special, so value for money at the time was excellent. The case design isn't anything special; actually, unless you're using a lot of drives of this style, the design is sort of an impediment because it doesn't stack with other external drive styles that well.

Otherwise, it speedy enough to host video files and hasn't had any other issues.

24.) Good Drive
Reviewed by: amoses Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas
Rating:
I am not sure why all the dismay over the software that comes with it. Sure it takes up a little room on the drive but it is not difficult to disable it and once you do that the drive works as dependable as the lacie's that I have owned. The drive is quiet, quick, and not a bad price. I am purchasing a second one this week to replace another lacie that just bit the dust. I use both of these drives to back up my MAC book pro and my IMAC using time machine and so far it has worked flawlessly. I was very impressed with how quiet it is. My Lacie's were quite noisy.

25.) Ignore Smartware and you have a great drive
Reviewed by: idesign
Rating:
This is the 6th WD HD I have in my collection. I am a data hog. And a total mac head. So When I read reviews like the ones above, and then I see that Amazon has stopped shipping the device because everyone is pissed at the Smartware, I find it a bit unfair. This is a good product with bad software. But then again, Western Digital is a Hard Drive company, not a backup company.

Your macs come with Time machine. Why would you want to use Smartware? If you don't want to use time machine, why not use Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich software? TIme machine works fine. If your still on 10.4 Tiger, then clone your system. But 10.5 came out over 3 years ago, and is the best Mac OS to date.

So instead of convincing amazon that there is a problem with this device, call WD. I admit, the firmware update didn't seem to do anything for my drive, but my drive is backing up just fine using Time Machine.

IF YOU IGNORE THE INCLUDED SOFTWARE, THIS IS A GREAT, FAST, DEPENDABLE DRIVE. PERIOD.

26.) Perfect if not for unwanted software
Reviewed by: Raymond Yu Florida
Rating:
It's exactly as described. I ordered this Firewire drive not for time machine purposes but to use as a dedicated itunes content storage.
It's lightning fast compared to USB, so far it has been reliable, it's cosmetically pleasing, blends in with my Aluminum 24" iMac.
I agree with other reviewers on Western digital utilizing their software to run the drive is totally lame, but it's not so bad when you update the firmware.
If you're anal about unwanted software than stay away from this drive.
I love it, just wish you could permanently rid their software.
A nice touch that you can label the drive and the label remains even when disconnected from power source.

27.) So far so good
Reviewed by: Hem Bhandarkar
Rating:
I purchased this product about a month ago and so far it has met my expectations.

28.) Intrusive Software Detracts from a Great Product
Reviewed by: lon401 CT
Rating:
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

29.) Beware SmartWare
Reviewed by: Anthony11 Seattle
Rating:
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.



30.) Smartware Virtual CD mars an otherwise great drive
Reviewed by: drealyea NYC
Rating:
They call it a feature, it's an unnecessary pain, possibly even a bit buggy . Tried moving it into the trash to hide it now I get a disk insertion error on boot up.I'm given a choice of ignore or eject. Ignore keeps the CD hidden, eject remounts it.Either way it's annoying .As others have pointed out the Windows only software/firmware update isn't for this model

The labeling feature is a cute idea but not of much use unless you have multiple drives you are swapping out on a regular basis.

Assuming you want to use the software included it's still a 5 star drive , but if not it looses some points, one for not putting it on a physical CD and another for not allowing you to get rid of it.

31.) It looks great but scratches easily and made kind of cheap
Reviewed by: DJ Mic is in the house Los Angeles, CA
Rating:
I was so excited to own this unit until I found out how easily this item get scratches and the white vented area around the hard drive will warp do to heat. I just returned mines and got a Lacie since it's metal and stays cool.


Buy this WD at your own risk if your a DJ and use your Hard drive to play music out doors during the summer.

Other than that, it LOOKS great though the program thAT comes with it is a B**ch. Takes up HD space.

32.) Some good things and some shortfalls
Reviewed by: Roy Wiegmann Dallas, TX
Rating:
I should not have bought the Western Digital My Book Studio for the pre-installed software that came with it ate up too much of my storage space. And I am not able to delete this Smartware. This device is for Mac users as advertised and has been preformatted. That's one thing I find good about this device because I hate to format a drive.

I use the USB interface because I can connect it to three computers at a time but am experiencing awfully slow file transfer rate. My friend uses it with her desktop alone using the Firewire 800 and finds the file transfer rate much better than mine.

Data archiving is a real pleasure because I am now able to create my own labels to remind me what I have stored. This is a good inclusion for someone who is absent-minded like me.

33.) Good performance, and value per dollar. Louder than expected.
Reviewed by: Mac Fan(atic) USA
Rating:
Nice packaging and drive works as advertised. In large file transfers I'm able to get 60-65MB's per second transfer rate over a firewire 800 connection from my mac mini. Not the fastest external drive I have but fast enough for a video editing scratch disk which is why I purchased this. Included software runs well on a mac and is optional. You can also thankfully unmount the WD software CD that is included on the drive.

My only complain on the product is that it's a rather loud drive. Louder than my Comcast DVR. In the office where my mini sits it's usually completely silent can't even hear the mini running. However when this drive fires up it's quite lout in comparison. I also have an Otherworld computing Aluminum Quad enclosure with a WD 2TB green drive in it. That drive is about 10MBps faster in writes and much quieter than the My Book studio.

So if noise bothers you and I am being picky here it's really not that loud you might want to look for another solution. It's just louder than I had expected. Thankfully you can set the drive to go to sleep after a customizable period of inactivity. 10 min being the shortest option.

34.) Perfectly good hardware, irritating software.
Reviewed by: Patrick Alexander Las Cruces, New Mexico
Rating:
If this drive didn't have smartware on it, I'd have no complaints whatsoever. However, if I'd known about the smartware beforehand, I wouldn't have bought it. I have no interest in using this or any of the other sorts of software that hardware manufacturers have recently decided to inflict on consumers, but I'd have no particular complaints if I could just get rid of it. Western Digital and other drive manufacturers should let consumers know beforehand whether the included software is removable (not just disablable, even, but -removable-) or not. If someone out there wants to buy a drive with smartware permanently infesting it, fine with me. I dont. Just let us make informed decisions.

35.) software stupidity
Reviewed by: Michael Edelstein San Francisco, CA, USA
Rating:
Sometimes drive shows up, sometimes not. Lots of fiddling to get it onto desktop. Not my experience with other similar drives, even My Books. Intrusive software, but worse is that the latest firmware update said no drive found, though shown on desktop, moved files there, and will not update it. And thus the intrusive software cannot be removed without the update that won't take. An hour spent hating the folks who brought me this issue. A good deal, until you get the drive. Until they PROPERLY address the issue, steer in other directions.

36.) Big Step Backwards for My Book
Reviewed by: Chris Ogden
Rating:
As pro photographers, we own dozens of My Book drives. They have been perfect for archiving/delivering client projects. However, in this model, Western Digital took a big step backward. They mysteriously dropped the eSATA port (which was on this model a few months ago). This means that copying terrabytes of data to the drive takes a REALLY long time now.

Also, it shipped with outdated firmware (which they theoretically updated, but then pulled from their site); outdated utility software which could not recognize the drive, etc. The first call to support was a disaster, they tried to cut 4 months off the warranty(!), and then did not understand the product, etc. The third call got a bit better, but still no way to format the entire drive (they permanently partition a slice for their software which only sporadically mounts, often giving error messages, and eats into the net-available space).

Often, under Snow Leopard 10.6.3, mmounting the drive gives a "scary" error message "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer... ignore / eject." While we understand that it's referring to the stupid utility partition, Our less technical clients could freak out. In any event, such messages do not inspire confidence in the drive's data integrity.

The "fancy" software configurable label on the spine is pretty lame - it only shows the amount used when you use their (poor) backup program! Also, the drive label only accepts 12, DOS characters (all upper case, etc).

It's really too bad that these once-wonderful drives have been so arbitrarily crippled.

37.) warning: annoying ac adapter
Reviewed by: David Hogg Department of Physics, NYU, New York City
Rating:
The power supply with this unit is designed such that on a standard power bar, the plug blocks three outlets. If your computer and media area has as many power cords as mine does, this represents a significant problem. Don't buy this without also buying an extra power bar! Also I agree with other users that the "smart" software is very intrusive. I use rsync, not guis!

38.) Think about it...
Reviewed by: Oldink Sherman Oaks, CA
Rating:
...Which is something I did not do. This drive was suggested as a boot drive. It *is not* a boot drive for my early Intel iMac running 10.4.11. I cloned the iMac's internal drive to this WD drive and attempted to boot from it; I wanted to use it for my boot drive--my original internal drive was almost full. No go. Would not boot. I called WD and was informed that they do not support this drive as a boot drive. (Courteous and knowledgeable support, by the way.) So I decided to use it as my Time Machine drive on a different iMac running 10.6, and placed it in a chain with two non-WD drives. It didn't work there either. The two other drives (LaCie) worked fine by themselves in a chain and the WD drive worked for Time Machine in isolation. But when the WD drive was chained with the LaCie drives I continued to get spontaneous unmountings (!?) and "Did not put device away properly" notices. Life's short and getting shorter so I've returned it. Furthermore (how could there be more?) I agree with other reviewers: the Virtual CD is problematic and the firmware/software "cure" as offered on the WD support site would require either a degree in engineering or a large bottle of something alcoholic to implement.

39.) Smartware on drive is intrusive, not defeatable
Reviewed by: dosers South Pasadena, CA USA
Rating:
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

40.) SmartWare *Firmware* Unremovable
Reviewed by: J. Bleecker Venice, CA USA
Rating:
The fact that I purchased a hard drive that comes with software I neither wanted nor can remove is worse than annoying. You can still use the drive, but it forces another useless, read-only drive to pop-up on your desktop. Completely useless and worthless - especially if you're using your drive for something other than back ups, or don't want to use the backup software that comes from a company that is largely in the hardware business. I mean -- it's just a disaster. Probably the advice of someone from marketing. I can't recommend this drive, especially if you are even a modestly active computer user. I know what WD is trying to do -- but they should stop that and leave the software and user experience design to the experts.

41.) Don't Do It Windows Users!
Reviewed by: dwdw3 Columbus, OH USA
Rating:
Bought for the firewire interface and wanted to use as an off-site backup to my My Book Studio II. This was horrible to deal with and I've returned it. I'm a PC tech by trade and this drive is a major pain on Windows 7 64-bit. Would only seem to work OK with USB 2.0.

WD forces you to install and use their Smartware program to manage the device, and their newest firmware release does not support this model. The result is; YOU CAN NOT HIDE THE CRAPWARE PARTITION ON THIS MODEL. Smartware also doesn't seem to integrate well with their WD Drive Manager x64 software used to manage the Studio II and raid setup.

May work well for Mac users, but on a PC it would not run firewire from a brand new HP laptop, or chain off my My Book Studio II which works well with all connections.

Big disappointment and I will be reluctant to buy another WD external now.

I'm very grateful to Amazon for their top-notch service in facilitating the return.

42.) Western Digital - No longer Mac Compatible
Reviewed by: Natalie Fava Harrisburg, PA
Rating:
I have been using Western Digital drives for my Macs for the past 6 years. This was my fourth Western Digital drive to serve as a back up of all of my drives and let me just say, not only am I extremely disappointed by this product, but I am AGGRAVATED. Some specs about my computer - Mac Pro - 2x2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon - 2 GB 800 MHz Memory - Max OS X 10.5.8. Needless to say, I am running on a very speedy, efficient computer and this product completely slowed my computer down and even a few times... SHUT IT DOWN. Somehow, it managed to freeze all of my USB ports, making it impossible to safely shut down my computer without just holding in the power button (as my mouse and keyboard were completely disabled). Western Digital's SmartWare technology is a better idea than it actually is in reality - the software is slow, - even on Firewire 800 - lags quite a bit and makes it impossible to be doing anything but backing up your files. My issues with the software may be partially due to the fact that SmartWare has no technology updates for my version of OS X, however, my Mac Pro, though new, is only 1 year old. If you have a newer Mac, especially a Mac Pro, I would highly advise against getting one of these. Don't waste your money and save your headaches for other projects. Looks like it's time for me to invest in G-Raids...

43.) Caveat Emptor -- Reformating & Tech Spt
Reviewed by: Chuck Pelto Pueblo, CO
Rating:
Bought two of these to be a mirrored-pair for operation with a Mac Mini Server running OS X 10.6.2.

Wanted to rename the pair.

Erased and was running the RAID mirroring activity when I got the Gray Screen of Death, i.e., kernel panic crash, half-way through the mirroring process.

Could NOT reboot the computer. Had to reinstall the operating system. However, afterwards, could not reboot the computer again. It ate the operating system again. Had to disconnect these beasties and reinstall the OS AGAIN.

Called WD about it. They said, "We don't support server machines."

Three guesses what I told them. First two don't count.

44.) Shame on you WD
Reviewed by: Toxic Kitty Palm Desert CA United States
Rating:
I will add my voice to the growing dissatisfaction with the unnecessary software that is forced on you by Western Digital. I mean, come on WD, this item is specifically made for Mac. Who would want to use your crappy software when Time Machine is included standard with every Mac. Yes, I read about the virtual CD and the inability to delete it before I bought this product, but it is no less annoying because I knew about it in advance. Eject it and it comes right back.

Amazon continues to publish wrong information in the description of this product...

"New Updates for WD SmartWare Software (11/16/09): This update implements customer feedback requests to: hide the Virtual CD (VCD), enhance the ability to opt-out of WD SmartWare completely, and exit WD SmartWare from the Windows system tray. Visit Western Digital Support to download your update by inputting the model number of your hard drive."

The update to disable the virtual drive on WD website specifically states "This update is not intended for My Book Studio or My Passport Studio drive".

45.) Worthless piece of junk
Reviewed by: Justin M. Hamm Maumelle, AR
Rating:
No Brian my concerns are not unfounded. Every time time machine starts to backup he comes the sound of the WD drive starting up. I know that I have to completely stop everything, I mean everything, I am doing and walk away from my computer. I even have to stop iTunes from playing. If not then its like I am using a PC all over again. Here comes the pinwheel of death. And most of the time trying to close down iTunes doesn't even work. Once the process has started my mac is rendered helpless. Even worse that the hourglass on a PC. I literally cannot do any work while my computer is being backed up. NOTHING!!!!! If iTunes is playing in the background it will occasionally stop and eventually slow the whole process down, or crash. These sorry SOB companies want to try and fill there products will so much crap that your computer's memory and cpu are gobbled up. This software isn't intuitive and doesn't play nice. Now I am stuck with this worthless hard drive. I guess I will just start shelling out $$$ for all Apple stuff. At least I know eventually they will get an update out that will allow everything to work in perfect harmony.

46.) Get rid of the Software
Reviewed by: Biff the Amazing Flatulator Grungetown/Rat City, USA
Rating:
The onboard software is on a partition that cannot be deleted. You are stuck with this missing chunk of space as well as the crappy software. A 1.5 TB drive is really a 1.4TB drive. I keep having to unplug and replug the drive to get it to mount in Finder (Mac). Junk!!! Western Digital was trying to be too fancy for their own good. I would sooner spend the same amount of money for a quality Firewire 800 enclosure and a 1.5 drive so you can have the entire drives space for your files and be able to upgrade the drive when you outgrow it.

47.) Unreliable - serious problems after just 3 months
Reviewed by: Erich Drazen St. Louis, MO
Rating:
I bought this drive because I am a photographer and needed a large capacity drive to store my photos, and I wanted a firewire 800 drive for the transfer speed. I am working with a macbook pro that I have had for 6 months. When I first bought the drive it worked fine. I won't go into the smartware software there have been enough other people giving their opinion of that. No long after I started using the drive, I would sometimes get a message saying that the drive I inserted was unreadable by the computer and gave the options to initialize, eject or ignore. If I would click ignore, the drive would then still work fine, without any problems. Yesterday, I got that same message again, but this time after I hit ignore, the drive didn't show up on my desktop. I unplugged it and tried again, and then this time hit initialize, where I was brought to the disk utility screen. I "repaired" the disk, and was able to access it again, but continued to have some problems with it, and had to repair it again. This morning, the drive seemed to connect without a problem, but when I tried to transfer photos from my memory cards onto the drive, it would give me an error. I could transfer the photos from the memory cards onto another drive, but not onto this one. I am in the process of trying to repair the drive yet again, but I would definitely advise people to avoid this drive. Fortunately, I have most of my work backed up onto other drives, but even if I get this drive working again, I don't think I could trust that it will continue to work.

Update 5-14-2010:
I was able to get everything off the drive and reformat it. At first the drive seemed to act normally again. I was going to try and use SuperDuper to backup everything from my new G_RAID drive back onto the MyBook Studio, but didn't have time and cancelled the operation. Now, the drive won't even power up, instead of a hard-drive, I've got a $200 paperweight sitting on my desk. I will never trust my data to a MyBook drive again.

48.) AVOID - Virtual CD Cannot be Disabled
Reviewed by: velo2234
Rating:
Avoid this drive as it contains a virtual CD that cannot be disabled by reformatting the drive. It is built into the firmware. Just got off the phone with WD and they confirmed that there is no way to disable this. So unless you are ok with a virtual CD automouting every time you boot your computer; avoid this drive.

49.) Unremovable Bloat/Spamware - No More WD for Me
Reviewed by: Peter Parker Earth
Rating:
Just to add my comments on this new practice by Western Digital of putting bloatware and spamware on their drives that cannot be removed. It is stored in flash memory, so cannot be deleted. It will take up an extra drive letter on your system. The software, like all software that is included free with hard drives and computers, is worth exactly what you pay for it. Every one of these applications is either an "SE" (Special Edition, and yes it's "special" because it is crippled by removing the advanced features--rather non-PC naming convention there), or it is included because it is very cheap for WD to buy. That second point is because the product isn't the best, or usually even close to it, and sells far fewer copies on the open market than its competitors. The only way the software company survives is to sell hundreds of thousands of copies to WD for $5.00 or so each.

Thus, for every one of these applications, you can and should get a better one for the specified purpose. For backups, for instance, you should be using Acronis or Ghost, both top in the class and fairly close in capabilities. Pretty much up to personal taste which one you use. Yes, you spend some money. But for $100, think how much time and trouble is involved if you lost all your data from a drive or system.

Overall WD's hardware designs work better than Seagate for external drives, because of cooling. I have 15 USB External drives, so I have some experience. The Seagates have a 60% failure rate, but they replace the drive no questions within 5 years, so it's just the time involved in re-copying the data onto the new drive. Of course, you never, ever put only one copy of data on an external drive like these. You must buy two and keep the copies synchronized. Regardless of manufacturer, these drives fail a lot. (You can get the RAID versions of these, but your data is far less safe from failure than having two separate drives, because the failure is often the controller, which can destroy the data on both drives anyway.)

Regardless, until Western Digital stops forcing their inferior versions of software onto customers, not allowing them to remove those applications after they have bought the drive, I will not purchase another WD product. I suspect they are losing a lot of sales. I immediately returned two of these new style drives once I learned I could not remove the software. Hopefully the next round of versions will reverse this marketing-driven policy, because I do like their drives.



50.) Amazon's Fraudulent Advertising
Reviewed by: DAK
Rating:
Beware the intrusive software that comes preloaded on this drive. It is impossible to erase. Tech support was no help. Amazon's claim near the top of the page that a software fix exists is FALSE! The fix does not exist for Macs. Yet this drive is marketed specifically for Macs. I have complained to Amazon but they refuse to tell the truth in the item description. The drive itself works ok, but don't trust Amazon's item descriptions. They are notoriously bad about correcting errors.

51.) Drive Shuts down, Fails to backup, Total Junk, Don't Buy
Reviewed by: Carlos Boston, MA USA
Rating:
Don't Buy. Drive is a piece of junk. It shuts down and it stops doing backups even after calling WD to configure the energy saver to always stay ON.

USB port is dead and overloads computer's USB port. firewire port still sort of works.

Cannot do firmware update over firewire port and since USB port is dead, you can't update firmware.

e-INK DISPLAY IS ANOTHER WASTFULL GIMIC which only displays info if you run the WD software which then tries do do a second backup and is a resource hog.

This drive has this extra software that interferes with normal operations. It tries to index and do an backup. In particular when used on a Mac this is totally useless and not needed as time machine is free on the mac and is a much better software.


52.) HATE the smartware on this drive, you can't delete it and can't recover the lost space.
Reviewed by: Sir Lancelot Los Angeles, CA
Rating:
WD put some very unsmart 'smartware' on this drive, on a CD partition that shows up on your desktop every time you use the drive.

You can disable it from showing up, but it'll take you several hours trying to figure out how. However you can't erase that partition. I tried, apple disk utility cannot see the CD partition so you'll never recover that space. This is so annoying I probably won't buy WD again - It's beyond frustrating - I just spent an hour or so downloading different updaters to fix the problem to no avail. It's doubly annoying as WD make create drives. GRRRRRRR... WD please dump this stupid unsmartware CD partition, put that stuff on a separate, real CD if you must.

53.) NOT reliable and NOT A GOOD FIT W MAC OS X
Reviewed by: llacharbach the hinterlands of Idaho-ho-ho
Rating:
I bought TWO of these and the speed is OK but the remarks of other reviewers on the aggravating "smartware" are on the mark. Worse still is that neither drive lasted more than 7 months - both are now dead. I have a seagate freeagent desk firewire drive now that is running my time capsule backups without error or problems for over 16 months. I would recommend you look at that drive for Mac OS users.

54.) Amazon policy
Reviewed by: R. Ho USA
Rating:
This is not a fair review but I have no other option to vent. The drive was shipped on 7/16 from a distribution center no more than 15 miles from my house to Amazon's shipping partner which is supposed to hand over to USPS, as of today (7/26) there is still no sign of the drive, and according to the shipping status, it is still being held by Amazon's shipping partner. I emailed Amazon twice and they insisted that I wait another 2 weeks before asking for replacement or refund. It is obvious that the package is lost with their shipping partner and never made it to USPS. It frustrates me greatly that Amazon refused to follow up with their shipping partner. I understand the delay with UPS, but with USPS less than 15 miles from my house?

55.) junk
Reviewed by: J. Vance Jr.
Rating:
I bought this drive and could simply not get it to connect to my brand new Mac: totally unreliable junk.

56.) Great Disappointment
Reviewed by: explorer New England
Rating:
I have had this product for several months now. I did a lot of research before selecting it wanting something compatible with my iMac 27 and Time Machine. It's been "AWFUL"! From installation to current use nothing has worked properly and WD support has not helped.

Features of Western Digital My Book Studio 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800, Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAJ0010HSL-NESN

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.

1.) Pure performance for Mac with FireWire 800;
2.) Customizable e-label;
3.) Automatic, continuous backup;
4.) Password protection and 256-bit encryption;

Package Height x Length x Width: 8 in. x 8 in. x 7.1 in.
Package Weight: 3.1 lbs.

Accessories for Western Digital My Book Studio 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800, Desktop External Hard Drive WDBAAJ0010HSL-NESN