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Wed, 18 Mar 2009

Western Digital Mybook Studio II

I have recently replaced all the external drives on my file server. Previously I was using four Lacie 1TB jobbies (each of which was really four 250GB disks internally), but wanted to replace them because they're noisy and draw a lot of power. So I ended up with two Western Digital Mybook Studio II 2TB devices, which I've been using for 3 months (one of them) and one and a half months (the other).

I've got the same amount of storage as before, but it's now pretty much silent, drawing a lot less power. They were easy to install - as is expected these days with a modern operating system they're "plug n' play". They even came out of the box pre-formatted with HFS+ instead of something retarded but PC-compatible, although if you are lumbered with a legacy Windows machine reformatting them should be trivial. Speed is ... not something I care much about, as all my access to them is over a nyetwork that is slower than the bus connecting the disks to the host machine, but they're not noticeably slow.

I chose those disks because they were the ony ones I could find that were the right capacity and had both USB 2 and Firewire 400 ports. I need FW400 because the machine hosting them is old enough to have that and to have Ye Olde Slowe USBe. I want USB 2 for future compatibility. Turns out that they also have FW800 (which I'll probably never use) and eSATA, which may be useful one day.

They're also upgradable. The old Lacies I had aren't - they're sealed units. With these WD units, you're supposed to be able to lift the lid and replace the disks. And there's the only small niggle I have with 'em. On both the drives, the lid feels really cheap and plasticky, and wouldn't open properly. Yes, I did read the manual. I ended up levering them open with a screwdriver, and now they won't close properly.

But that's a small gripe. I might care if I had to carry them around with me, but I don't. I might care if I was the sort of shallow fool who cares what his disks look like, but I'm not. I reckon they're damned good value for money.

Posted at 22:33 by David Cantrell
keywords: electronics
Permalink | 2 Comments

I got a 2TB Studio II as well, excellent unit. But don't believe their 'upgrade' marketing hype on this!!!

I just upgraded the disks with two new WD Green 2TB drive, I hoped to get a 4TB total disk capacity (RAID 0).

Not a chance, it refused to see more than 2TB, it seems WD hard coded these units.

Unlike the Ethernet products that WD sell, it seems these units cannot be hacked!!!! Still pushing WD for a solution.

So you can only replace a faulty HD with exactly the same HD capacity.

BTW: To open the case you push down to un-click the latch!!!

Posted by Tim Cox on Mon, 17 Aug 2009 at 05:02:59


Yeah, the fine manual told me to push down. Didn't work.

Posted by David Cantrell on Tue, 18 Aug 2009 at 19:41:32


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