Western Digital My Book Studio LX 2 TB FireWire 800/USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive (Aluminum)
Western Digital My Book Studio LX 2 TB FireWire 800/USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive (Aluminum)
Rating:
List Price: $ 192.99
best Price :$ 160.99
this best price old post please check price update(price will lower or up)
- Pure performance for Mac with FireWire 800
- Cool-to-the-touch aluminum enclosure complements your Mac
- Customizable e-label
- Password protection and AES 256-bit encryption
- Compatible with Apple Time Machine
Western Digital My Book Studio LX WDBACH0020HAL-NESN 2 TB – Hard Drive – Retail WDBACH0020HAL-NESN Hard Drives – External
List Price:$ 192.99
best Price :$ 160.99
this best price old post please check price update(price will lower or up)
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about 10 months ago
Some minor technical issues, but a solid and fast drive,
With both USB and FireWire interfaces, this is a good drive for any Mac computer. It comes with a FireWire 400/800 crossover cable, and the drive works fine on older Macs with a FireWire 400 port (though the data transfer rate isn’t what it could be). The casing is solid and the drive runs smoothly and quietly without any vibration, hums, or rattles.
WD SmartWare, software with some drive management and backup utilities, comes with the MyBook. It’s optional and only needed for those who would like an alternative to Apple’s Time Machine backup software or a method to password protect the data on the drive. I use Apple Time Machine to back my computer up to another drive, so I haven’t been tempted to use the WD SmartWare software yet. Unfortunately, the WD SmartWare is installed via a virtual CD that appears on the Mac desktop when the drive is plugged in. The virtual CD can be shown or hidden with some tinkering but, alas, it is an annoying way to distribute software when a normal install CD or download site would have sufficed.
Some minor technical issues:
1. To upgrade the MyBook firmware, the drive must be connected to your computer via USB, not FireWire.
2. I originally “daisy chained” this drive to my computer through another FireWire external HD. While the drive itself worked fine, the WD SmartWare virtual CD did not appear on my desktop when the drive was connected in this fashion. Connecting the MyBook drive directly to the computer via FireWire solved this problem.
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|about 10 months ago
WD MyBook Studio LX 2TB,
I have several WD MyPassport Essential and WD MyPassport Studio drives which I use with my MacBook Pro and all have been working very well for me. So when I needed another external drive for my Mac Pro, I decided to get the WD MyBook Studio LX 2TB drive. I already have several external drives for my Mac Pro but they were all put together by hand from separately bought internal drives and storage case. This is the first external drive I’ve bought as a complete unit.
I was initially reluctant to buy this drive because of that one bad review by H. T. Johnson who couldn’t get the drive to boot from a SuperDuper! clone. But since I was going to use this drive primarily for backing up data, I wasn’t really concerned that I may not be able to boot off this drive. I bought it anyway with the intention of testing it myself to see if it really wouldn’t boot off a SuperDuper! clone.
Well, the drive arrives yesterday and the first thing I did was to clone my system drive with SuperDuper!. After cloning the drive, I rebooted my Mac Pro and sure enough, the drive did not appear as one of the bootable drives. I replaced the Firewire800 cable with the Firewire400 cable and the drive appeared as a bootable drive. Switched back to the Firewire800 and it was gone again.
I also have a mid-2010 Mac Mini Server, an early 2008 MacBook Pro and a mid-2009 MacBook Pro so I tested the drive on those as well. They were all able to boot off the MyPassport Studio LX drive without a problem using the Firewire800 cable. My Mac Pro is an early-2008 model but so is one of my MacBook Pro so I didn’t understand why the MacBook Pro could boot off the drive but the Mac Pro could not.
Then I had a brainstorm. H.T.Johnson mentioned that he was on his 6th external drive so I assumed that all his other drives were connected to his Mac. All my external drives are also connected to my Mac via Firewire800. So I tried rebooting my Mac Pro off the drive with all the other external drives disconnected. And this time, the Mac pro did boot off the MyBook Studio LX drive. I’m not sure why but it looks like the MyBook Studio LX drive doesn’t like to have too many other Firewire drives connected at the same time when trying to boot off of it using the Firewire800 cable (it’s fine otherwise for non-boot related operations even with other devices connected). I didn’t bother to check how many external drives can be connected before the MyBook Studio LX drive fails to boot.
The reason I wanted to do this test and see if the Mac will boot off of this drive is because my sister who has an iMac was also looking at this drive for her backups. She wanted to use the drive to clone her system into and boot off of if necessary. She was happy to hear that she could and placed her order for this drive.
From what I’ve seen, the MyBook Studio LX seems to write data faster than any of the other external Firewire 800 drives that I have so I’m really happy with its performance so far.
After I installed the SmartWare software and changed the volume label that’s showing on the LCD display of the drive, I uninstalled the SmartWare software and hid the virtual CD so that it never gets mounted. The VCD doesn’t even show up in Disk Utility anymore.
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|about 10 months ago
Excellent product–Previous problems solved,
The backup software is now optional. Great storage for the money (2T) in a relative small space. I like the ability to password protect the whole drive. Works great with the Mac right out of the box. Went back and bought another one.
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