Western Digital My Book Studio (2TB) review: Western Digital My Book Studio (2TB)
If you need a FireWire 800 drive, the My Book Studio gives a good amount of grunt, and is about as Maccy as one can Mac. Now we just need to wait for Apple to pick up USB 3.0, and we can forget about all these disparate interfaces.
Craig Simms
Special to CNET News
Craig was sucked into the endless vortex of tech at an early age, only to be spat back out babbling things like "phase-locked-loop crystal oscillators!". Mostly this receives a pat on the head from the listener, followed closely by a question about what laptop they should buy.
You can always tell when you're holding an Apple-based accessory, judging by exactly how much powder-finished aluminium is gracing the exterior. In the case of the new Studio, it's not just silver-coloured plastic, but actual aluminium, adding a bit of heft to the product.
Western Digital My Book Studio (2TB)
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
It also ups the Mac ante by including Mac Pro-esque perforations and throwing in a pair of FireWire 800 ports. There's a USB 2.0 port as well, but make no bones about it — it's here for nothing more than compatibility.
The charts above are beasts of many tells, most clear of which are the performance ceilings of FireWire 800 and USB 2.0, saturated before the drives can reach their potential. Once you hit the superior e-SATA, Hitachi's drive breaks away, while Western Digital's RAID-0 beastie, the Studio Edition II, does its best to nip at its heels, but suffers when it comes to random reads and writes. The USB 3.0-enabled My Book Essential drive makes an interesting data point, too: the lesser performance is a potential penalty of converting a SATA drive to USB.
There are areas where Hitachi's G-Drive takes the lead on the Studio, but this is likely a side effect of extra storage density meaning extra speed.
If you need a FireWire 800 drive, the My Book Studio gives a good amount of grunt, and is about as Maccy as one can Mac. Now we just need to wait for Apple to pick up USB 3.0, and we can forget about all these disparate interfaces.