My Book Studio Edition 2TB External Drive for Mac Computers

If you are planning to add extra storage to help you work on your application intensive projects -  such as rendering complex 3D objects and special effects, smooth video editing, as well as saving huge blocks of data quickly - they My Book Studio Edition II may be just for you.

Currently, there are two series of My Book external drives available for Apple’s Mac computers and they are My Book Studio Edition (review here) and My Book Studio Edition II. Here is a review of the Studio Edition II.

My Book Studio Edition II comes in 2 storage sizes, 1TB and 2TB. If you purchase 1TB drive and want to upgrade it to more storage, simply open the case and replace the existing drive – no screwdriver needed. The drive is about the size of two or more paper books nesting neatly together like volumes on a shelf. It uses about 30% less energy than standard systems and runs quietly because it doesn’t need a fan. You don’t have to install anything to use this drive, just plug it in and it’s ready to use. There is no CD to install; the included software loads from the drive the first time you plug it in.

This drive is already set up with HFS+ Journaled formatting for complete Macintosh compatibility. Pre-loaded software included requires Mac® OS X 10.4.8 or later. The size of this drive takes no more space than a paperback book. It is also compatible with Apple’s Time Machine.

You can back up important projects to multiple destinations including file servers, portable drives and My Book. Every time you save a change to your data, it’s automatically backed up. Other features include Capacity gauge, enabling you to see how much space is available on your storage system. Intelligent drive management features include automatic power-up, Safe Shutdown, LED status and activity lights make this storage system especially easy to use.

The drive features powerful quad interface, including USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and 800, and eSATA 3 GB/s. USB 2.0 is convenience and compatibility among multiple computers

USB 2.0 was designed to allow many peripherals to be connected using a single standardized interface socket and to improve the plug-and-play capabilities by allowing hot swapping, that is, by allowing devices to be connected and disconnected without rebooting the computer or turning off the device. It features maximum speed of 480 Mbit/s.

FireWire 400 can transfer data between devices at 100, 200, or 400 Mbit/s half-duplex data rates, while FireWire 800 allows a transfer rate of 786.432 Mbit/s full-duplex via a new encoding scheme termed beta mode.

eSATA offers up to 3 Gb/s speed comparable to a state-of-the-art internal hard drive. Prior to eSATA, external hard drives were connected via USB 2.0 or FireWire. While eSATA can provide faster transfer rates than USB or FireWire, it requires its own power connector.

My Book Studio Edition II external drive for Mac can hold over half a million digital photos, up to half a million songs in MP3 format or up to 50,000 songs in uncompressed CD quality, up to 150 hours of digital video or up to 880 hours of DVD quality video, and up to 240 hours of HD video. You can purchase My Book Studio Edition directly from Western Digital’s online store.