Customer Reviews

Western Digital My Book Studio 500 GB USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

Like it says in the review title, I really WANT to like this drive. Unfortunately, I can't. I don't. And I probably won't. Ever. Why?

I bought one of these from another vendor (sorry Amazon, their price was better). I installed the drive on my 24" aluminum iMac (which I DID buy from Amazon, good job, guys). The drive recognized fine on firewire 800, and I set Time Machine to use it for backups.

Then the problems started. The drive would "freeze" when it went into suspend mode, and it wouldn't come back. OS X is too stupid to stop trying to access a "dead" drive, so the suspended/frozen drive would hang the system. The only solution was to power down the drive (if possible), or remove the firewire cable. Worse, sometimes the drive wouldn't power down using the power button, so I had to pull the power cord. NOT good.

Once the frozen drive was out of the firewire chain, the OS would recover semi-gracefully, with a "Device Removal" error. I figured it was a fluke, so I put the drive first in the firewire chain. No luck. Then I changed cables. No luck. Okay, try the drive as the ONLY firewire drive. No luck. It would still freeze, and still hang the system.

So, I figured I just had a defective drive. No problem. I already had another on order, so I sent the first back to the vendor and waited for the second to arrive.

Same problems with the second drive. I used every connection available: firewire 800, firewire 400, and even USB (iMac's don't come with eSATA, so I don't know if it's a problem too). No luck with any connection, OR any cable (I have several available, which work with other drives). The My Book Studio drive still hangs AT LEAST once a day, usually several times.

So the second drive is going back for a refund, and I'm going to call the other vendor and just have them refund my money for the "defective" drive already in transit as a return.

Now, why do I want to like this drive?

Pros:
- It's good-looking
- It's quiet (because it's fanless)
- Quadruple interface (nice!)
- It's small

Cons:
- It just doesn't work... do I really need any MORE cons?

When the drive started giving me problems, I went looking for a solution (updated firmware, updated Button Manager software, SOMETHING). I found several people on the Apple Discussion Forums with the same problem, which made me realize that the drive itself was the issue.

Google for "my book studio freeze" and you can read the Apple Support discussion, which will lead you to more problem discussions.

That being said, I love Western Digital, and they're my first choice for external drives. I just think they have some MAJOR teething pains with the My Book Studio line. And since other Mac users love them, I suspect that WD Studio drives simply don't like the new iMacs. But since I spent $2000 on my computer, and $200 on the drive, the drive is the one that gets returned. Sorry, WD.

If you want a good, reliable drive for your iMac, I've had lots of luck with LaCie, and I've heard really good things about OWC drives. But if you're a tried-and-true WD fan... stay away from THIS drive.

I have been a devotee of WD drives for years. I have 15 functioning on my work server (mostly in 2 e-sata enclosures using port multipliers), I have 4 inside my home machine right now, I have a good 30 sitting about for use here at home as I need them. They're work horses that always performed flawlessly...till now.

These MYBOOKS with their sleep "feature" are criminally bad. Can't use them for servers as they will send a server crashing within 10 minutes of disuse in either SATA or FW 800 configurations. Used for backup, your backup will freeze within the same 10 minutes. The drive comes with backup software -- that's what they're being positioned for -- but they can't be left idle or they sleep and won't wake.

Older model MYBOOKS (I have three) work fine. They are in an always-on mode. I thought I was simply buying more of the same when I purchased the Studio Pro models.

This "feature" is built into the drive and system preferences won't override it. Some myopic developer decided what the community needed was a sleeping drive so what we've all got now are bricks. There is no "fix" coming from Western Digital. I called to inquire; that's coming from a Level 2 tech.

Doing a google, there's a PC script to disable this mode and for Mac users, a chron script if you're brave enough to alter your root user password and create the invisible script in the terminal. I am not. This is like playing with Res Edit (I know, I'm dating myself...) and unless you're proficient, I would not recommend it.

So use with caution. They're fine for your desktop where you can push the power button and prompt it to spin back up. They will cause you a lot of grief if you can't monitor it.

I recently bought a new iMac and immediately fell in love with the Leopard operating system(I'm someone that uses both Vista and Leopard now, and as much as I hate the advocates on either side, I'm finding myself using the Mac all the time and only using my Vista box when I'm forced to). One of the features I was looking forward to using was Time Machine, which for those that aren't familiar is a new program in Leopard that automatically(automagically?) backs up your entire Mac and then does hourly backups of any changes that occur thereafter. Wow. Erased an email yesterday that all of a sudden you wished you had today? Go to Mail, click on Time Machine and then go back in time to when that email still existed on your machine and recover it. Awesome. Simple. So enough about that.

Obviously you need a drive to do this, and I didn't have one until the other day when I bought this WD My Book. I plugged it in and immediately Leopard spotted it and asked me if I wanted to use it for Time Machine. I sure did! It's quiet, it's cool to the touch, and it looks cool as well! It matches my Aluminum iMac. The only downside is I hate the light on the front, which is easily solvable...I turned it around!

Now if my Mac ever crashes, I can be back to exaclty where I was within 15-20 minutes. Brilliant. Thank you WD and thanks Apple for making this software a part of your base OS.

I generally don't write reviews but felt compelled to in this instance because there's something peculiar going on with these new My Book drives. I've gotten two of these exact model (500GB) back to back and had to return both because they would die out the same day I got each of them. In each instance, I checked the AC plugs, all the ports, and could not get the drives to spin up again. Like the other reviewer noted, the issues with this particular drive are known and should be avoided. Shame really, as the new drives look quite nice. However, reliability is the only factor you should be looking for in an external drive. I'll be downgrading to an older version of their My Book line to be safe, until WD works out the kinks with these new ones. (PS. These were used with Macs).

ONCE AGAIN, MY FRIENDS, DO NOT BUY THIS DRIVE.

I have this model and hooked it up to my MacBook Pro using the included(!) Firewire 800 cable. Then I reformatted the drive and partitioned it to dedicate half of the drive for Time Machine and the other half for a clean install of OS X for backup in case I have troubles with my MacBook Pro. I setup the drive to shutdown whenever I remove it from my desktop or turn off my computer and setup Time Machine to do the backups on this drive. Now all I do is plug the firewire cable to my computer (which starts up the drive), start Time Machine to start a back up and when it's all done, I eject the drive from the desktop and it automatically turns the drive off and then remove the cable from the computer.
The drive is very quiet and compact. It only gets really hot the first time you run Time Machine because it does that initial back up of all kinds of files, but after that, it runs cool. I always keep this drive plugged into the wall outlet and only plug the firewire cable to my computer when I want to make backups. You may want to use it on your desktop computer and keep it plugged to the computer at all times, but I take my laptop all over the house and at least once a week I hook it up to the drive to do my backups. It really doesn't matter what hard drive you use to do backups, the important thing is to do backup regularly. But with this drive (and of course, a Mac using OS X 10.5, specifically using the Time Machine backup software) this process is soooo much easier, it is truly the poster child of real "plug and play" (and backup, in this case).

Small, looks great, quiet, it's everything you want in an external drive. Just don't turn it off. Each time it turned off, whether manually or by power failure, I could not get the drive to turn back on. The button does not work. One review said WD told him to hit the box as the power switch hangs up. If I hit is a few times, it lights up as if there was no problem. This is not the way a $200+ device should operate. I have no confidence in this drive as a backup.

January 28 Update... It has been one week and five business days since I asked WD about the problem with the My Book Studio Edition. Despite two follow up notes to them and a claim of one day response to most questions, there has been no response. If I could edit the stars the rating would now drop to one star.

I use other wd mybook drives and they have been problem-free, so I had high hopes for this one. Unfortunately, it would frequently (several times daily) unmount itself in the midst of heavy drive access. I suspect it was due to the firewire 800-to-400 conversion cable/interface that came bundled with the drive. There is no native 400 jack, which is annoying on its own, but since the drive had no problems using the USB interface, I have to think it was actually not truly meant to be used as fw400.

Sent it back, got another drive with fw400 (iomeya) and have had no issues

I am speaking about the My Studio 500GB for the Mac. In looking for a good external storage device for regular daily back-up I was guided to all sorts of products. But the My Studio was recommended the most and even was a highly recommended drive from the experts at Apple. The installation was easy (just connect and the software is loaded onto the computer automatically). Keep the software icon in the dock and you are all set. I travel a lot and I use the MacBook Pro (I still use Tiger OS X) and when I get home I simply attach the Firewire 800 (included in the box along with Firewire 400 and a USB cord) and the External Drive updates my backup within seconds. Yes, the initial back-up of the files took about 45 minutes, but then I had a lot of huge files and photos and music on my internal drive. But now, I leave the My Studio plugged into the power outlet and all I need to do is attach the firewire and the external drive turns on and backs up any changes within a minute. I can purge deleted files if I want, but I prefer to keep old files and the 500GB has the room. When I leave, I just quit the software and eject the My Book and it turns off all by itself (don't touch the on/off button; it is all automatic). I highly recommend this to Mac users. Don't get the WD 500GB for the PC even though it says it is good for Mac. You have to reformat the entire Drive and it does not work well with Mac. It costs a little more for the My Studio 500GB for Mac, but the ease of use is well worth it. Thanks Apple for the recommendation!

OK, despite negative reviews, I just bought a refurbed My Book Studio because it was REALLY cheap for a FireWire 800 drive. And, sure enough, I started having the much-discussed problem of the drive not mounting on the desktop. I'm not sure about the reliability question - I'm keeping my fingers crossed - but I figured I'd share what I've gleaned from other people's posts on what to do if you want your My Book to work with an Intel machine running Leopard. With just a little work, I got mine to work just fine...at least so far.

Before you start using it, do the following:

1) Go to the WD site and download and install the proper firmware update. The detailed instructions make it seem complicated to do, but it's really not. Just follow the steps exactly.

2) Use Disk Utility to format (reformat?) the drive in GUID.

3) And, despite the lousy manual's vagueness, make sure you connect the drive thusly: With the drive's power cord out, the Mac off, and the FW cable disconnected, boot the Mac. Plug in the My Book's power cord. Connect the FW cable first to the Mac, then to the My Book's port. The icon should show up on your desktop. It does on mine, every time. And it stays there if I restart the Mac.

Now, I have no idea how well my drive will work over time. So far, the speed and quiet of the fanless drive is really nice. Time Machine works like a charm. And, contrary to other folks' experience, I found WD's phone support to be just fine. But it's really fussy about FW connections (though not USB), and I docked it a star simply for WD's not fully explaining how to get a Mac to recognize the drive.

EDIT: Shortly after I posted the above, the My Book went back to not mounting, or disappearing from the desktop, when connected via FW 800, but working just fine via FW 400 and USB. Obviously, the My Book's FW ports worked. Was it the iMac's port? A software glitch? After much gnashing of teeth, I went after the most obvious possible weak link - the connecting cable, which had plugs that seemed less nice than the plugs on the FW 400 cable. (And which I remembered someone else complaining about somewhere online.) I phoned WD's tech support, they sent out a new cable gratis, and bingo, FW 800's back in business...at least for now. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

EDIT ON THE EDIT: Several months later, it's been working almost flawlessly. (Well, every once in a while, Time Machine is unable to complete backup, but trying again manually always succeeds, so I have no idea whether or not the drive is the issue.) I'd definitely raise the star rating if Amazon would let me, but....

The Western Digital My Book Studio Edition 500GB was an excellent purchase from the Apple store. I previously owned a LaCie d2 160GB with firewire 800 hard drive which did the job but just became to small to hold my backups. It is not easy to find an enclosure with firewire 800 and eSATA with a 16 MB cache/7200 rpm speed.

What I did not realize until I used the WD hard drive was how obnoxiously noisy the LaCie was when it ran. This WD is hardly audible and fast. I did not use the backup software that was included (no cd, it's on the drive) since Leopard has Time Machine. However, I am using the Smart Power software which powers on and off the WD hard drive in sync with the Mac.

It was difficult to get the WD to show up on the Mac, but after power cycling and re-attaching the firewire 800 it was good to go. Please remember I have only had this for one day, but the money is well spent!