Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #596 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Western Digital
• Model: WDH1Q10000E
• Released on: 2007-10-07
• Dimensions: 65.35" h x 21.26" w x 53.94" l, 2.58 pounds
• Hard Disk: 1000GB

Features

• The My Book Studio Edition is ideal for storing photo and video files
• Thanks to its FireWire and eSATA connections, you can transfer even your largest files in the blink of an eye

Manufacturer's Description
Speed is what you need when for video editing, big design projects, or managing photo shoots and that’s what this drive delivers with FireWire 800 and eSATA connectivity. With our automatic backup capability your creative masterpieces will be backed up the minute you save them

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Great product if...........you upgrade firmware!
There has been a lot of bad reviews about WD My Books on Amazon and across the web, predominately regarding their reliability, noise level and sleep function. Well here's my take on it.

Firstly it's imperative if you want your MyBook to work properly to go to the WD web site and download the latest Firmware fixes for your particular hard drive, (Homepage > Support > Downloads > My Book > then pick your model) making sure your HD is connected to your computer using a USB cable. I downloaded the following for my Mac: Firmware Update, WD Drive Manager and Mac Turbo Drivers, and then just follow all the on screen instructions.

Having done this you CAN now successfully daisy chain two 1TB My Books together via the two FireWire800 ports and they are both recognised by my iMac separately, this didn't work before the update i tried it.

The light on the front that tells you how full the hard drives are also works fine.

The whole automatic sleep function also seems fixed, when not in use for about 10mins the MyBook powers itself down into sleep mode (front light glows on and off every 5 secs) and happily comes out of sleep when requested, either through me searching for files or from Time Machine doing a scheduled back up.

I've also heard of people having problems with completely shutting down the My Book. Well with the firmware upgraded you can now do it one of two ways. Firstly you can eject (unmount) it from your computer, this puts it into sleep mode, then simply press the power button on the back of the unit once and it shuts down completely. To power back it back up just press the button again and it will be recognised (mounted) by your computer in a few seconds
OR
Simply hold down the power button for a few seconds and this ejects (unmounts) it from your computer and turns it off in one fowl swoop.

As for noise well it is really quite, maybe slightly louder than my iMac but apart from the occasional grumble here and there it really is silent.

Speed - FireWire 800 is awesome, i have been copying 160GB of data from computer to HD and again onto the daisy chained HD and it is twice as quick as USB, taking just an hour.

Reliability - Well who knows I've just bought 2 so time will tell. However i have still got a 250GB MyBook i bought a few years back (from Amazon) and it is still working fine. I'm also reassured by the 5 year warranty and the fact i bought them through Amazon.

It was a really tough decision for me deciding which hard drives to go for, i looked at all sorts from Lacie to Buffalo but for me the WD My Book Studio was the one i went for because of cost, connections, looks and my past experience with them.
Should you go for one, well that's up to you but it's a lot of 1TB hard drive for the money now it's around the £100 mark and the firmware upgrade fixes (as far as i can see) all the other problems.
As for reliability...watch this space!!!

WARNING/IMPORTANT: eSATA users, choose cable with long connectors
When the drive and 1m eSATA to eSATA Cable., arrived I used USB2 and Firewire 800 with under Windows Vista SP1.

I had to wait for a, StarTech.com 2 port SATA to ESATA Slot Plate M/F which arrived separately a few days later. eSATA did not work and I came to the conclusion despite verifying that the motherboards BIOS was set correctly that my motherboards SATA was not compatible with eSATA drives.

So I ordered a StarTech.com 2 Port PCI Express eSATA Dual Profile Card - Storage controller - 2 Channel - SATA-300 low profile - PCI Express x1 a week later it arrived and I tried it. It did not work. Tried booting into XP (despite loading a lot faster) again it did not work.

So I searched for "esata mybook not working" and it turns out that it a well known problem that WD are aware of, that the connectors on some cables are not long enough.

So I applied light pressure to the eSATA cable, slightly deforming the plastic body a connection was immediately established. It also turns out did not need a PCI Express card and it works with my existing motherboards SATA sockets using the slot plate. Though I don't want to be have to hold the cable pressed against the drive whilst trying to do some work.

Why was I offered a cable on Amazon that does not work with this drive under the "Frequently Bought Together / Price For Both" option?

So I now have a MyBook, a Cable, a Slot Plate, and a PCI Express Card and NO connection via eSATA.

I have totally unnecessarily wasted HOURS trouble shooting. IMO all MyBook boxes leaving the warehouse should be labelled with a warning!

I would have really liked to recommend this product and with a different cable may well turn out fine. However it could have been so much better. WD have done the hard bit built the drive, electronics etc written the drivers. If only they choose better quality components and tested it more thoroughly. I would pay extra to have better quality. It is vital that the cable does not fall out when I am working on a particular file! Has this not been considered by WD?

On the plus side the drive feels solid, and appears well ventilated and is compact.
I hope it looks after my data.

Gorgeous, but bad. (Good warranty luckily!)
Well, frustratingly enough after under a year of use, mine has given up the ghost, I wish I had paid more attention to similar stories when I was making the purchasing decision, I just took the old, 'it won't happen to me', mentality, it didn't pay off.

We'll start with some positive points, yes, it is very attractive, the design is sleek, and it matches all the aluminium Mac products, (read: all but the white MacBook currently).

Also, it is very quiet, and the speed over FW800, (which I was using with a MacBook Pro), is bleedingly fast.

However, all this is good and well, but not when the product stops working. My problem is as follows, I noticed one night that it was starting up repeatedly, on it's own, attached to the MBP, but that was 'sleeping'.

I thought this was strange so held down the power button to force it off. Then, ~5mins later, I heard it powering up again, and again and again, the one loud noise it makes is when it starts the hard drive going, the accelerating of the motor, (I would guess), and it was doing this constantly. It was late, so I just unplugged it until the next day.

The next day, I plugged it back into my Mac, and it was doing this constantly, still. The problem with this being is that if you are using it and it cuts out every minute, then the transfer is effectively cancelled, so you are really quite screwed, (excuse the term), with using it at all. This applied particularly in my case for time machine backups on my Mac.

The reason this is particularly frustrating is that all my files are still there, you can access them for short periods of time, and in fact, whilst I was preparing to send it off for replacement, I managed to get a few files off that I really wanted to keep, but now I am without backup until the replacement arrives, which I may sell on and get a new drive, because I cannot be bothered to deal with the same problem again.

Anyway, just my story, I am thoroughly disappointed with what is a fairly expensive product, (more so when I bought it a year back), to have such a quick 'death'.

I would not recommend this product, but would recommend thoroughly reading reviews here at amazon, and elsewhere too, to avoid this disappointment I had.

Charlie Styr