Today's Best Tech Deals
Picked by Macworld's Editors
How do I connect my Book Studio Edition to my Mac - Answered by a verified Tech Support Specialist. We use cookies to give you the best possible experience on our website. By continuing to use this site you consent to the use of cookies on your device as described in our cookie policy unless you have disabled them. Western Digital External hard drives My Book Studio (USB 3.0) manuals download on ManualAgent: User's Manual, Quick Installation Guide. Western Digital My Book Studio (USB 3.0) Quick Installation Guide (5 pages). Western Digital My Book Duo; Western Digital My Book for Mac (USB 3.0).
Top Deals On Great Products
Picked by Techconnect's Editors
Western Digital My Book Studio 2TB
Compact and light enough to easily fit in a backpack or briefcase, Western Digital’s My Book Studio external hard drive is a cute little bugger. Designed to resemble a book, the 6.5-inch tall drive stands upright, and you have the option of digitally labeling your drive (with 12 characters or less) so it’ll read like a title on the binding a book.
Designed specifically for a Mac, this plug-in-and-go drive is compatible with Apple’s TimeMachine software and has two FireWire 800 ports and one USB 2.0 port, with cables for both included. The drive is relatively quiet, with its ventilation system sitting up top, and its plastic build keeps the unit lightweight at 2.6 pounds. Unfortunately, its plastic casing also makes the unit a little less durable than aluminum drives, and when we received our My Book Studio, it came with a little bulge in the backside that we had to physically snap back into place.
One of the biggest complaints I had about the My Book Studio was its fickle power button, which made it very unclear whether I should either press and release the power button quickly, or hold for a few second and wait, in order to turn the drive on and off. Either way seemed to work (or not work, rather) and because its tiny LED light had a few seconds lag time to indicate when the unit was turned on, I resorted to becoming the hard drive whisperer: experimenting with button pushing wait times as I nestled my ear against the My Book Studio to hear the drive spinning for startup.
When I did manage to power on the My Book Studio, it performed well in our hard drive tests. Transferring a 1GB file took 42 and 34 seconds through a USB and FireWire 400 (using a FireWire 800 to FireWire 400 cable), respectively. Duplicating the same file took an average of 1 minute, 10 seconds using USB, and 55 seconds using FireWire 400. In our low-memory Photoshop tests, the drive timed in at 1 minute, 24 seconds for USB, and 1 minutes, 3 seconds for FireWire 400. When we tested the My Book Studio using FireWire 800, all three tests clocked in less than 45 seconds: transferring our 1GB file took 22 seconds, copying the file averaged about 32 seconds, and our Photoshop test was completed in 43 seconds.
Our AJA system tests, which mimics writing a full scale, high quality, 2GB HD video file that is 2GB with a video frame size of 1920-by-1080 and 10-bit RGB, yielded 28.1MBps for writes and 37.1MBps for reads through USB. With FireWire 400, the write and read speeds were 27.6MBps and 33.7MBps, respectively. With FireWire 800, the write speed was 60.1MBps, while the read speed was 54.6MB/ps.
Timed trials
| Copy 1GB file to USB 2.0 | 0:42 |
|---|---|
| Copy 1GB file to FireWire 400 | 0:34 |
| Copy 1GB file to FireWire 800 | 0:22 |
| Duplicate 1GB file via USB 2.0 | 1:10 |
| Duplicate 1GB file via FireWire 400 | 0:55 |
| Duplicate 1GB file via FireWire 800 | 0:32 |
| Low-memory Photoshop: USB 2.0 | 1:24 |
| Low-memory Photoshop: FireWire 400 | 1:03 |
| Low-memory Photoshop: FireWire 800 | 0:43 |
Scale = Minutes: Seconds
AJA tests
| Write | Read | |
|---|---|---|
| USB | 28.1MBps | 37.1MBps |
| FireWire 400 | 27.6MBps | 33.7MBps |
| FireWire 800 | 60.1MBps | 54.6MBps |
How we tested. We ran all tests with the drive connected to a Mac Pro Quad 2.66GHz Xeon with Mac OS X 10.5 installed and 1GB of RAM. We tested the drive with each available port. We copied a folder containing 1GB of data from our Mac's hard drive to the external hard drive to test the drive's write speed. We then duplicated that file on the external drive to test both read and write speeds. We also used the drive as a scratch disk when running our low-memory Adobe Photoshop CS3 Suite test. This test is a set of four tasks performed on a 150MB file, with Photoshop's memory set to 25 percent.—Macworld Lab testing by Lynn La
The drive also comes with its own software, called WD SmartWare, which mounts on your desktop when the drive is plugged into your Mac. Sometimes however, our Mac did not register SmartWare when our My Book was connected, though a few restarts of our computer were able to remedy this situation.
The SmartWare software has its benefits because it is a one-stop shop, a control center to customize all your My Book Studio’s capacity and security settings. You can choose your password and with its 256-bit hardware-based encryption, the drive will have an extra layer of protection from unwanted access. It is also a place where you can see the progress of your backup and the different categories of your drive’s content like music, photos, and movies, along with how much memory they are each respectively using.
SmartWare also allows you to customize your My Book Studio’s label, so you can name your drive something along the lines of “VIDEOS 09” or “HOME PICTURES” to remind you of what’s inside. The label itself uses e-paper technology, which does not require a backlight to illuminate pixels like most flat panel displays. Instead, it reflects light like paper, and because it uses no electricity to display its text, the label will remain displayed, regardless of whether your My Book Studio is plugged in. The label also shows the available storage capacity left on your drive and a padlock icon lets you know if it is secured.
Macworld buying advice
At $250 for the 2TB model, Western Digital’s My Book Studio is a decent hard drive for all your casual storing needs. Although the confusing power button is something I find worth griping about, its nifty labeling feature and easy to navigate SmartWare software make up for it. Also, its decent results times and environmentally conscious elements definitely make the My Book worth putting on your shelf.
[Lynn La is a Macworld staff editor.]
Western Digital My Book Studio 2TB
Cons
- Fickle power button
The rpm rating of this drive doesn't seem to be listed anywhere. Not on the box, not in the manual, not online, not even on Western Digital's website. I even called them but they were evasive, insisting that an external drive's rpm was not an important factor and that they didn't have that information anyway.
Finally I got an answer and, according to the supervisor, it is 7200 rpm. However, understandably, I would still like to verify this before I begin using the device. I've hooked it up to my MacBook but System Profiler doesn't list the rpm rating in the drive's specs. I'd pry it open to check the manufacturer label, but that would obviously void the warranty. Any ideas?
Model #: WDBC3G0020hal-00 (from the chassis)
fixer1234closed as off topic by Shinrai, Breakthrough, Dave M, Nifle, ChrisFJan 18 '12 at 22:34
Questions on Super User are expected to relate to computer software or computer hardware within the scope defined by the community. Consider editing the question or leaving comments for improvement if you believe the question can be reworded to fit within the scope. Read more about reopening questions here. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
2 Answers
Yes opening the case will void warranty, of course. However, most likely the drive inside is a Green Drive. I have opened MANY of the 1TB Mybooks, and they were all Green Drives. The bare drives in the 2TB range in the Green series are most popularly classified as 'Intellipower' on the spin speed. This is a technology used to vary rpm and read speed for best performance to power consumption ratio. From the WD site on intellipower:
A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. Additionally, WD Caviar Green drives consume less current during startup allowing lower peak loads on systems as they are booted.
Manual My Book Studio For Mac Wdbaaj Free
I did find a listing for a WD20EARX bare drive, which is one of the 2TB Green drives, and it lists 7200 RPM. So it seems there is mixed information out there, though there is a chance it is 7200 RPM. Take it as you may.
PaperlanternPaperlanternUse something like Argus Monitor, which can access SMART drive attributes of a USB-connected hard drive. It will list the model number of the hard disk inside the USB enclosure. Look that model number up on WD web site, read the specs and you'll know the RPM speed.
Please note that the model number of the hard disk inside has nothing to do with the model number of the enclosure. Moreover, I wouldn't be surprised if same enclosure has different model hard disks inside depending on manufacturing date, factory, etc. In order to find the speed of the disk, you need the model number of the disk, not the enclosure.
haimghaimg