Home > Consumer Reviews > Western Digital My Book Studio II - 4TB (2 x 2 TB) USB 2.0/FireWire 400/FireWire 800/eSATA Desktop External Hard WDH2Q40000N

I had the previous drive space record holder, the WD 2TB drive, and I have to say that WD's build quality is declining. The 2TB used thicker plastic and had a rubber "bumper" around the exposed edges. The 4TB's casing is much thinner, plus the bumper has been replaced with the standard four little rubber feet on the bottom of the drive.

Worse, from my perspective, is the fact that they totally eliminated the Kensington lock slot on the back of the drive. I don't know about you, but I kind of want to keep 4TB of data from just up and wandering away. This is also a full-size (dual) drive, but they dropped the standard USB port for a micro-USB port in order to fit in the eSATA port. Why, I don't know, as there's plenty of space on the back. They also replaced the two-part power brick with a smaller brick that plugs directly into the outlet (and, of course, covers the flanking outlets).

Drive-wise, I have no complaints. Plugged it into my iMac and had 4TB's of space just waiting to be filled. (An actual 4TB, due to Snow Leopard's change in drive space reporting.)

But for the reduction in build quality, this would have been a five-star review. Western Digital, if you're listening, don't scrimp a dollar's worth of plastic and rubber on a $500 drive.

Easy to setup into Raid 1. I didn't install any of the programs came with the CD. and I'm very happy except for no eSATA CAble but I bought 6FT Shielded External Esata Cable M/m which worked perfectly with it.

Altough this product is advertised for Mac, I am using it on a XP Machine.
The main purpose was for storing all my iTunes videos and music on a raid-1 disk unit, which gave me more than enough space in a mirrored environment.
I had to configure it on a Vista machine, setting it to raid-1 was a snap (it comes preconfigured for raid-0 Mac format) and it also reformatted itself for Windows use. I am not exagerating when I say that in les than 10 minutes it was up and running, now I have 2TB mirrored storage for my iTunes library.

The only problem was that the installation program that came with the CD was faulty, failing to display the installation buttons and menues, but I managed to install directly from the .exe files on the CD. This was annoying and may be a problem for people with less computer experience.

However, it is a great product so far.

Several things I like. Number one is the low price. Number two is the drive size. Number three are the in/out options; takes SATA, Firewire 800, and oh yeah, pokey USB. Number four is it's formatted HSF+ for Mac right out of the box. PC folks can easily reformat it. Number five is that it has no fans, so I can use it as a media server connected to the listening/video room without the fan noise. Number six, it shuts itself down after 10 minutes, a feature I adore and it wakes up in ample time, about 10 seconds.
Someone complained that it was thin plastic; I think that's part of the cooling plan, bet your old one has nice noisy fan!
It was plug and play and we sort of like that a lot. I find it a great product, use it as a back up for my back up and am thinking of another for the said media server.
I bought this from Amazon, it's a fair price there, and quick out their door. I don't see how you can go much wrong on this baby.

I have two of the 2TB versions, and they've been great. This one seems identical, but it's twice the capacity! I was an early adopter, so I feel I overpaid a bit ($499.00), but considering the capacity, it was still a good deal. I almost bought a second when it came down to $430.00 with free shipping. The only question I have about these drives is whether they can be used for remote access when connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station, or Time Machine. I've heard that you cannot because they power down (there is a "green" drive inside). When I test this for myself, I'll post an update. But so far, so good!