Western Digital WDH2Q10000N 1TB My Book Studio Edition II Hard Drive with Quad Interface FW400/FW800 USB 2.0 and eSATA

Amazon Customer Reviews

(3 out of 5)

So far so good, except runs HOT

I thought this drive would finally release me from my worry that my backups will melt away before my eyes. The Greenpower concept seems well and good but I don't know about the long term viability of putting two of these drives in the same tiny enclosure with no active cooling.

After about 20 minutes of transfers I opened the lid and the drives burned my hand. I put a digital thermometer on the inside of the case between the hard drives and the air in there was 51C. The drives were probably between 60-70C as I can't be sure. Compared to my internal WD Caviar 500GB drive that runs at 32C when cooled by the case-fan the the My Book worries me. Not that I will be running the drives for 2 hrs at a time all the time but it happens.

Otherwise, I tested the RAID 1 feature by removing a drive while the unit was powered and when I replaced it, the rebuilding process automatically began. If I unplugged it during the rebuilding, it would resume when I plugged it in again. Again after only 15-30 minutes of rebuilding the drives were too hot to touch again. I can't imagine how hot the non-Greenpower drives get.

The power consumption ranges from 4W when off to 16W when rebuilding.

The interface is quite speedy as well. Roughly writing at 35MB/s using USB2.0.

I think I'm going to return the drive and build a NAS with two of the same drives inside for peace of mind.

(5 out of 5)

Works great.

Simple set up - worked right out of the box with no complications. Seemless interface with Apple Time Machine.

(5 out of 5)

Safety in Numbers

After having read many reviews of external hard drives, I
hesitated to buy one at all. However, I dreaded the possibility
that precious pictures and documents would be lost if my
computer's hard drive gave up the ghost. My researches led me to
this unit because it was specially formatted for Macs and because
it contained 2 500GB drives and thus could be used for double back-up
in RAID 1 configuration. It started the first back-up before I knew it
ready to do so, & it meshes beautifully with Mac's Time Machine
program. Despite my fears of destruction by heat or madness by
fan-noise, I was delighted and relieved to find that the unit
runs cool and is vented and footed in a way that has eliminated
the need for a cooling fan [thus no fan to test one's sanity].

(1 out of 5)

Drive died after a year

This drive started acting funky from the very beginning. It was noisy and the fan would come on for no apparent reason. It would appear that it may have just over heated itself into oblivion. I am hopeful that the stored data did not have the same result but with Western Digital's non-useful web site and almost non-existing support, I have my doubts. For a drive that the manufacturer should anticipate as being used for a backup device, its functionaing and technical support leave much to be desired. Contacting Western Digital by e-mail has turned out to be an utter joke where the only response you get is from an automated know-nothing. I ran the device in mirror image RAID mode for safety but that may turn out to have been a waste as well if I can't get any of my data back. I am hoping that WD will allow me to keep the drives, which I suspect are still functional (I doubt that they both failed) and send back via RMA the rest of the unit. They claim to respect the confidentiality of one's data but with the clutziness that I have seen so far, I have my doubts. An alternative would be to have them sell me a unit w/o the drives for a reasonable price.

(1 out of 5)

Horrible, simply doesn't work!

After countless attempts, I've given up trying to setup this drive on my iMac G5 running Tiger. At first the installation seems successful (i.e. I don't get any errors), but aftwerwards nothing actually works.

According to the manual, a "WD Drive Manager Status" menu is supposed to appear on the menu bar after the installation process. This is where you access the drive configuration, for instance if you want to switch to RAID 1 (like in my case). No such menu ever appears on the menu bar. I suppose the drive is usable as a RAID 0 out of the box, but without the software I cannot switch to RAID 1, which is what I bought this device for.

Locating the "WD Drive Manager" application manually (hidden somewhere in /Library/etc/etc..) and running it directly just brings up an empty sad window, meaning that the software does not detect any drive attached to the computer, even though the drive is plugged-in and appears mounted on the desktop.

I tried many things, including installing a firmware update even if it was officially for Leopard -- heck, what do I have to lose at this point? But the update failed to recognize that there was even any device connected to the computer! (obviously the drive *was* properly plugged-in and mounted on the desktop).

A quick search on the web revealed that this is not an isolated problem, and no solution is currently available. I wish I did a better job researching this product before buying it!

Stay away from this product if you want to use it as a RAID 1 system.