Product Description

Speed is what you need for video editing, big design projects, or managing photo shoots, and that's what the Western Digital WDH1Q5000N My Book Studio Edition 500 GB external hard drive delivers, with FireWire 800 and eSATA connectivity. With its automatic backup capability, My Book Studio Edition backs up your creative masterpieces the minute you save them.

Product Details

• Color: Silver
• Brand: Western Digital
• Model: WDH1Q20000N
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 5.40" h x 2.10" w x 6.50" l, 4.00 pounds
• Hard Disk: 2000GB

Features

• Plug-and-play setup for easy installation
• Automatically backs up important data, synchronizes files to keep them current
• Compatible with USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and 800, and eSATA
• Formatted for Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later, can be reformatted for Windows 2000, XP, and Vista
• Turns itself on and off with your computer and Safe Shutdown prevents the drive from being powered down until all your data has been written

Customer Reviews

Working Well with Macbook Pro and MacBook
Acquired this drive to replace a poorly functioning Simpletech Pro Quad 2TB RAID. This WD drive is quiet, fast, and unlike the Simpletech drive, does not stutter when connected via firewire 800 and 400 to my Macs. Drive operates quietly and without surprise. However, there was a problem getting it to mount the first time under firewire connection. Connecting via USB and partitioning the drive once, awakened the drive and thereafter it awakens via firewire correctly. That one problem is the only reason it doesn't quite get five stars.

This drive is pricier than some other solutions, but its nearly silent operation, high speed, and cool operation despite 8 hours of continuous file transfers make me want to get obtain another one.

Works Fine
The writers of the two one-star reviews need to learn how to format a hard drive. This drive comes formatted to the HFS+ file system used by Macs. Windows does not understand HFS+, so it doesn't show up in My Computer until it is formatted. It DOES show up in Disk Management. Simply format the drive to NTFS and it works just fine on a Windows box. Install NTFS-3G to your Mac and it'll work on both.

Update the firmware also to address issues with timeout and spin-up times...if you can.

Which brings me to two complaints. First, WD chose not to include an eSATA cable. It comes with USB, FW400, and FW800. Really, WD? One more cable broke the bank on this thing? Second, the firmware update program does not run on 64-bit Windows, and WD refuses to do anything about it. Run the update program on Vista-64 or Win7-64 and it will report "error while loading generic library". Email tech support, and you will be given an excuse about how WD does not support 64-bit Windows. So, hope you're still running a legacy OS! The folks at PLX Technologies / Oxford Semiconductor, the writers of the firmware program, need to get their act together because when Win7 ships and the whole industry moves to 64-bit, WD MyBook users will be left in the dust.

For the majority of users, those are nitpicks. A 3 foot eSATA cable can be had for $11 on Amazon, less than $5 elsewhere, if you want the extra speed.

I LOVE IT!
This drive comes with USB 2.0, Firewire, and esata capabilities (unfortunately no esata cable comes with it =/ )

It's super fast, It's quiet as heck, and it's huge storage.
If you plan on storing tons of video this is well worth the bucks if you hate waiting for transfers to finish.

Since it was a pain for me to find out how to get the firewire connection running I'll walkthrough getting it working with Windows XP.

Ensure you connect it via firewire and ensure that your 1394 Connection is enabled in the Control Panel\Network Connections.
Then open up Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Computer Management. Open the Storage Section on the left tab then select disk management. In the bottom right you will see the available disk drives. I can't remember for certain here, but i think I right clicked the big blue bar to the right of the drive not assigned a letter but labeled 1863.01 GB and created a new partition which let me format the disk and assign a letter to the drive. IMPORTANT!...Make sure if you use windows you at least Quick Format it to NTFS. Once the drive is formatted it should be viewable in your My Computer explorer window. A reboot may be required but I don't think it was for myself.

ENJOY!