WESTERN DIGITAL MY BOOK STUDIO EDITION II

Zippy, Voluminous External Storage



I really liked the Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition, which yokes two 1TB hard drives together to provide a terabyte of mirrored (RAID 1) storage. Think of the Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II as the Mirror Edition's fraternal twin. But while the Mirror Edition emphasizes protected storage, the Studio Edition II is all about speed and capacity. It's just the thing for video-heavy creative types who would enjoy having 2T8 of transportable storage by their desktops. It's Mac-friendly out of the box, though it will work with Windows PCs, too. In terms of dollars per GB, this is more expensive than a single-mechanism drive, but it's cheaper than a portable drive.

Within its case, the Studio Edition II has the same pair of Green Power mi hard drives as the Mirror Edition, and as with that product, the user can replace one of the Studio Edition II's drives if it fails. The Studio Edition II comes formatted for HFS+ (Mac format) and with RAID 0. (You can reformat to FAT32 or MIS if you like.) This means it can fully support the faster FireWire 800 and eSATA interfaces.

The Studio Edition II proved speedy on our test MacBook, taking only 49 seconds to copy our 1.2GB test folder via USB, 38 seconds via FireWire 400, and 32 seconds with FireWire 800. If all you need is a secure, protected place to store your backups, then get the (slightly) cheaper Mirror Edition. But if you have a home business or other small business or are a graphics professional, the Studio Edition II should float to the top of your buy list.—Joel Santo Domingo



PC Magazine April 2009