Product Description

Fast, green and Mac ready, WD's My Book Studio Edition II dual-drive, quad-interface external storage system for Mac offers optimum performance with up to one-third reduction in power consumption - get the speed you need and save a tree. Lightning-fast FireWire 800 interfaces combined with RAID 0 (Striped) yields high performance for fast, smooth video and audio editing, rendering complex 3D objects or special effects, and saving huge blocks of data in record time. Includes automatic data backup software, user-serviceability, a 5-year limited warranty, and works with Apple's Time Machine. This My Book Studio Edition II external hard drive is the affordable way to save your precious memories including up to 571,000 photos, 500,000 songs or 150 hours of video. Configurable to RAID 1 (Mirrored) eSATA, FireWire 800/400 and USB 2.0 and 1.1 Interface System Requirements - Mac OS X 10.4.10+, 10.5.2+, Windows 2000/XP/Vista; Available eSATA, FireWire 800/400 or USB 2.0 port Approximate Unit Dimensions - 3.87(W) x 6.54(H) x 6.06(L) Approximate Unit Weight - 5.2 pounds

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #840 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Western Digital
• Model: WDH2Q20000N
• Platform: Windows
• Format: CD
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 10.01" h x 10.01" w x 10.01" l, 6.55 pounds
• Memory: 8MB
• Hard Disk: 2000GB

Features

• Box Contents - Dual-drive storage system, FireWire 800 cable, FireWire 800 to 400 cable, USB cable, AC adapter, Software CD, Quick Install Guide
• Lightning-fast FireWire 800 combined with RAID 0 yields the speed you need for smooth video editing, rendering complex 3D objects or special effects
• WD's GreenPower drives, this system uses about 30% less energy than standard systems and runs quietly because it doesn't need a fan
• 2TB = 2000GB Hard Drive Capacity
• Pre-configured to RAID 0 (Striped)

Customer Reviews

high performance, 5 year warranty, self-rebuilding raid mirror
If you want the best performance, you would want to use it as eSATA. This would mean a cardbus or expresscard eSATA adaptor on a laptop, for example. But here is the one star that I have taken off: at this price, it still does not come with an eSATA cable! It has cables for USB and the 1394, but no eSATA. I have not had the chance to test it in eSATA because of the cable. The USB2 speed is good enough for my archival application. I've also read around and eSATA is not faster than USB2 by much in real life (maybe 25MB/s vs 30MB/s).

The 5 year warranty is industry standard and is reassuring. And by the time it's up, you will want a larger storage anyway. :P But you must keep in mind that that if the controller in the enclosure dies, your whole array dies. Hopefully the controller didn't write bogus information into your harddrives and then hopefully WD will be able to ship you a new enclosure and you can recover that way. (This is the one weakness of having RAID 1 as the only copy. Be ware: a faulty controller can corrupt your data or even wipe your drives clean. Don't let that be your only copy.)

Cost-wise, each of its 1TB harddrives retails at about 180 as of this writing and you still need two enclosures to mount them externally. That means you are paying 470 - 2*180 = 110 for WD's own enclosure. It may still sound like a lot for an enclosure but the pros of this one outweight the cost and cons:

- The enclosure does RAID 1 (mirroring) in its hardware, no real cons here as long as 1TB+1TB mirroring is good enough for your application.

- Fanless: Less noise and it's really silent, but it also runs rather warm even with air conditioning. I do note that there is a temperature sensor that will stop the drives when overheated. So there is technically no worry, unless the temperature sensor itself dies... And being fanless is what makes the 5yr warranty even better. I've replaced one too many fans in my enclosures. (Many fans die within 3 years...)

- Self-rebuilds: After replacing a drive, it will rebuild in several hours. Good: completely automatic. Bad: it does this offline so the data is not accessible while rebuilding.

- Green assembly: I should note that you can only use WD's own "harddrive assembly" in this enclosure. You cannot (at least within the warranty's limit) use your own harddrives, not even WD Green Series retail ones since they do not come with the assembly hardware. See the manual if in doubt.

In all, highly recommended if the capacity suits your need.

WD admits there is a firewire "technical limitation."
I have been using the WD Studio II 2TB on my 2008 iMac OSX 10.5.6 for two weeks. Connection: firewire 800. Today, it did not mount when I booted the computer.
Checked the WD Website Knowledge Base.

Discovered two things:

1. Knowledge Base Answer 1697: "This issue is caused by the external hard drive's built in auto on/off functionality not correctly receiving a command from the computer system to wake from a power saver mode."

Why does the auto on/off functionality not correctly receive the command from the computer system? WD goes on to suggest installing their WD Drive Manager.
Well, WD Drive Manager is already installed, how else could a user have arrived at this impasse to begin with?
And then they suggest to dismount the drive. How do you dismount an unmounted drive?

2. Knowledge Base Answer 1680: "This is an technical limitation between the FireWire interfaces on the Macintosh computer and the external hard drive."

By "the external hard drive" WD means THEIR brand of external hard drive. I have never had this specific problem with any other brands of external hard drives connected to my Macintosh computer.
When is WD going to fix this "technical limitation" that they have built into their Studio II external hard drive? I would say, that is a pretty serious "technical limitation."
1680 goes on to explain the workaround solution, essentially a routine disconnecting the power cable and reconnecting. Nice.

My hope is that this entire situation is the result of following the apparently misleading instructions shown in the Studio II manual: chapter 7, "Turning Off/Disconnecting the Device."
Since "Auto-off" is the first entry in this chapter, it leads the user to believe that this is the preferred way to operate the drive. Guess not: as it turns out, the hidden "technical limitation" of the firewire connection will eventually cause the problem I have described. I suppose I can't rely on "Auto-off." Use "Safe Shutdown" only, even though the instructions in the manual differ from the instructions presented in WD Knowledge Base Answer 976!
And, speaking of conflicting instructions, compare WD Knowledge Base Answer 1386 with the Auto-off instructions in the manual.

Based on all of this information from WD, conflicting and otherwise, my guess is that the Auto-off feature is problematic (at least with Macintosh computers) because of firewire "technical limitations" caused by the WD external drive design. This fact, if it is a fact, should be expressed clearly in the manual.

Why does it unmount itself?
Would be great, if the silly thing didn't unmount itself for no reason. Usually when there's no activity, although I dread the day is happens in the middle of a video edit. (There are reports around that it does happen.) For some reason, it just unmounts itself. Disappears off the desktop. No reason. Only comes back with a physical push of the power button. Of course, Western Digital says the problem is with Mac OS, not with them. No other drives display this problem & this is a commonly reported problem in forums.