WD My Book Studio Edition External 500GB Hard Drive

Good Internals in a Lousy Case

Strengths: True quad interface with SATA 2! Absolutely silent. Vents allow device to sit with books on a shelf.

Weaknesses: No ESATA cable included. Flimsy plastic shell. Minimal clearance at base limits convective airflow. Occasional issues recognizing the drive if connected in the wrong order (must connect power first).

Summary: I like this drive. If the case were a strong metal, I would give it 5 stars.

I successfully partitioned the drive for both Mac and Windows use.

My benchmarking tests varied oddly, but what I gathered says the MyBook is slower than the LaCie d2 Quadra. This might be due to the hard drive model, which I don't know. The drive performs really well under normal use.

ESATA 2 Benchmarks

Transfer Rate Minimum : 37.5 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Maximum : 73.5 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Average : 62.5 MB/sec

Access Time : 13.7 ms

Burst Rate : 37.7 MB/sec

CPU Usage : 1.6%

ESATA 1 Benchmarks

Transfer Rate Minimum : 37.4 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Maximum : 57.4 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Average : 45.9 MB/sec

Access Time : 13.8 ms

Burst Rate : 38.0 MB/sec

CPU Usage : 1.6%

Firewire 800 Benchmarks

Transfer Rate Minimum : 40.9 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Maximum : 67.0 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Average : 61.5 MB/sec

Access Time : 13.4 ms

Burst Rate : 54.7 MB/sec

CPU Usage : 3.7%

Firewire 400 Benchmarks

Transfer Rate Minimum : 32.8 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Maximum : 38.3 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Average : 37.9 MB/sec

Access Time : 13.5 ms

Burst Rate : 33.0 MB/sec

CPU Usage : 2.1%

USB 2.0

Transfer Rate Minimum : 27.3 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Maximum : 29.3 MB/sec

Transfer Rate Average : 29.0 MB/sec

Access Time : 13.8 ms

Burst Rate : 21.8 MB/sec

CPU Usage : 15.1%

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Great external drive, definately worth the money

Strengths: firewire 800 which is compatible with most macs compact color works with macbook pro/mac pro colors great warranty and great company to work with for questions

Weaknesses: lighting is annoying in a dark room

Summary: This is definitely worth the money for the drive. I use it as my Time Machine backup disk and it works really well for my 160 GB internal drive. the firewire 800 provides fast data transfer but it also has usb and firewire 400 capabilities so it can be transferred even to older PCs which is helpful. GO WD!

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