Home > Consumer Reviews > Western Digital My Book Studio II - 2 TB (2 x 1 TB) USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800/eSATA Desktop External Hard Drive WDH2Q20000N

OK drive stand-alone.

But disregard the product info: It does NOT daisy chain on FW800 bus on a Mac. WD Tech Support told me so. They have no fix planned at this time.

If you are serious enough to buy a FW800 drive, you are likely serious enough to want two of them... these do not daisy chain and so you will need to put one on FW400 or USB.

I bought this external hard drive three weeks ago. It was delivered on time and there was absolutely no issues regarding shipment (as is the usual for shopping with Amazon).
Although the drive is supposed to be an Apple-drive it was easily formatted and attached to my Windows Vista Ultimate system via eSATA. Both USB and IEEE1394 is way too slow so eSATA is a very nice option from Western Digital.
I've ripped my DVD collection and even though I have more than 200 DVDs on this drive I still have abt. 1TB left of space ;-)
I will not hessitate recommending this drive for anyone with the need for massive external storage!

If you're installing this on Windows, don't use the CD that comes with the drive (it only includes crapware unless you root around in the subdirectories for other fairly useless software) and don't follow the instructions in the manual, none of this helps. Search for the Western Digital Knowledge Base article, for Windows 7 this is Answer ID 3838:
[...] Western Digital Knowledge Base URL deleted by Amazon
Using this method there shouldn't be much difference between installation for XP, Vista and Windows 7.
These are good instructions except that they don't mention that you'll see a 200 MB EFI System Partition for the 2 TB and 4 TB versions of this drive, not sure about the 1 TB. This partition is needed because of the size of the drive and you don't want to muck with this.
This drive takes about 10 minutes to format and install on Windows if you follow these instructions.
The only reason you might want to install any of the software off the CD is if you want to change from RAID 0 to RAID 1, but if you're using this for backup you'll want to keep the RAID 0 setting. There are a couple of other bells and whistles on the CD software, like displaying the temperature of the drive and having the LEDs indicate the capacity, stuff I can easily do without. If you've already installed the Drive Manager and you're having problems try removing it and following the above instructions.
I've found that this drive works far better on eSATA than other eSATA drives, so I'm pretty happy with it, and for the first time I'm seeing eSATA hot swap working. I'm also seeing 100 MB/sec throughput on eSATA compared with 35 to 40 MB throughput on USB and Firewire.
My only complaint, and the one star off, is that it is the ugliest flat silver color imaginable, a color that was maybe okay in the 60's. They should include a can of black spray paint for this!
It would have been nice too if they had included an eSATA cable rather than 2 Firewire cables.

paul j

I love this new 4TB hard drive. It is very easy to use, has all the connections I could want and transfers data very fast (Using Firewire 800 connection). Truly a plug and play item for my mac, plus it has the full 4TB of storage, unlike certain external hard drives of the past. And being able to daisy chain this with my other firewire drives is great. Can't wait to get my second one!

Nothing new to add here except to balance the 5 star reviews with my 2 star-- and to warn those Mac users who think it won't happen to you-- don't buy this drive-- it will happen to you too, just as it did me. Same problem not re-mounting after sleep. Doesn't do it all the time-- just sometimes. Too bad, otherwise a good drive, but it is getting to be a pain having to reach over and plug/unplug to get it to remount.