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| Western Digital 1TB My Book Pro Edition II Review |
| Page 2 - RAID/Operation/Conclusion |
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One Terabyte is a lot of hard drive space by
anyone’s measurement, and with a number of external drives now hitting this magical number for less and less money, we decided to take a look at what Western Digital’s contribution to the market has to offer.
The model we’re looking at today is the Western Digital My Book Pro Edition II. At a glance this unit gives us 1TB of storage space from its 2 internal drives of 500GB each, 3 interfaces (USB2.0, Firewire400 and Firewire800) all wrapped in a silver plastic shell and retails for around AU$575. Not a bad price when you consider a 500GB internal desktop hard drive sells for around AU$240 on its own, so once you add two of them together you’re only paying around $95 for a double drive case with RAID capability, 3 interfaces and the included software, decent value in anyone’s books.
Appearance:
The casing of the My Book is made up of a single piece of silver plastic wrapped around the front and sides, mounted over a rather rigid but lightweight metal frame. The appearance of the unit is very minimalistic with only a single button on the front of the unit surrounded by two rings of LEDs to indicate power, activity and even how much space is being used on the drive, the only other markings are on the side of the drive with the Western Digital logo “WD” screen printed on each side. Overall it has a very ‘MAC G5’ appearance.
The top, back and base of the My Book is covered with perforated plastic to help ensure the internal drives are kept cool, this is coupled with a temperature controlled (and very quiet) fan which all in all keeps the whole unit quiet and reasonably cool. There is some heat out the top as you’d expect of something with two 3.5” desktop drives inside, but even after several hours of operation, it’s only warm to the touch, not hot at all.
There are no feet on the My Book, only a continuous strip of rubber that goes around the edges on the top, back and sides. Having this strip means the My Book can be stood up, laid down on its side, or put upside down and never move or get scratched, as the rubber strip will always be between the main drive and whatever surface you have it on. Quite a clever design.
Connectivity and installation:
The My Book Pro Edition II offers 3 different connection types, you can use either USB2.0, Firewire400 or Firewire800. These connection types mean the My Book is both Windows and MAC friendly, and no matter which connection type you use, installation is a real plug and play affair with no drivers required, for MAC users anyway, as the drive is preformatted for HSF+ (Journaled), a native MAC format. For Windows users they will need to repartition and format through Windows disk management tools before they can use it, this is all covered in the provided Quick Start guide though, so no-one should have any problems with installation.
Having both USB2.0 and Firewire connectivity options is a good thing and it provides excellent compatibility across almost all systems, MAC and PC alike, but with a drive of this size, something a little faster would have been a nice inclusion, such as eSATA, which is becoming more and more common on higher end systems these days, and let’s face it, what kind of system is a 1TB drive going to be hanging off? It’s more than likely going to be up there in terms of its specs and more often than not will have an eSATA connection. As eSATA can be almost 4x faster than even Firewire800, it would come in handy when you need to transfer/backup a few hundred gigs of ‘stuff’ on a regular basis.
RAID:
The My Book Pro Edition II Pro has 2 internal 3.5” desktop hard drives, like you would find in your home PC, and Western Digital have by default set the drives up in a RAID 0 striped array to give maximum speed and the ability to use 100% of the drive space. I personally think JBOD would be a better idea, as the USB and Firewire connections are never going to stress the data throughput rates of even one of the drives, let alone a striped array, plus if one drive dies you’d only lose at most ½ your data, not all of it like in a RAID 0 array, but maybe that’s just me.
If you don’t want to use a RAID 0 array and are willing to sacrifice a whopping 50% of the drive space, the included software gives you the option to reconfigure the My Book into a RAID 1 mirrored array, which is an ideal solution for data security, as even if one drive dies, all the data will remain safe and accessible until the faulty drive is replaced, the only downside is it cripples your massive 1TB drive down to a mere 500GB, so it’s certainly a sacrifice.
In Operation:
Once installed, the My Book will appear as just another hard drive in My Computer or on your MAC desktop, so it’s as easy to use as your main hard drive. The data speeds are as good as can be expected from USB or Firewire, and it’s best if you can make use of the Firewire800 connection, as with the RAID 0 setup there’s oodles of speed to spare, and as I mentioned earlier, it’s unlikely you’ll ever max out the drive speed through these connections, but best to go as fast as you can I always say. If you change the array from RAID 0 to RAID 1, there’s no difference in how it connects or operates, aside from the reduction in capacity.
The included backup software is quite capable when running a basic backup, and has reasonable configuration options, but all in all it is rather basic software, but good enough for most home users. It managed a full system backup of our test bench totalling 9GB through the Firewire400 connection in about 15 minutes, not too shabby at all.
Conclusion:
The 1TB Western Digital My Book Pro Edition II we tested today is a very well priced and value for money external drive system, very easy to use and compatible with both Windows and MAC PC’s across the board. The unit is however a little limited in terms of features and connectivity (i.e. eSATA would be really useful) but if it’s bulk storage space you’re after, this will fit the bill perfectly.
OzHardware Rating – 8/10
This product can be purchased online at www.techbuy.com.au (Direct Link)
