Western Digital takes 2TB where no hard drive has gone before

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 02 June 2008 18:43

Opinion and Analysis

Disk Space... The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the hard disk Western Digitise, on a 2TB mission to explore strange new file formats. To seek out larger capacities and new interfaces. To boldly go where no hard drive has gone before.

Although billed as pre-formatted for the Mac, the WD My Book Studio Edition II, with 2TB of storage, can easily be reformatted for XP or Vista. With 2TB, is space still the final frontier?

Ok... ok. So we’re just talking a hard drive here, not a 24th century starship. But Western Digital (WD) have still managed to put together what looks like a very nice 2TB hard disk backup/storage system, comprising of 2 x 1TB WD ‘Greenpower’ drives that run quieter, use less energy and run cooler than non green disks.

They’re also available in a 1TB capacity, which would then use 2x 500GB drives.

Designed for creative professionals, workgroups, small offices and anyone looking for fast data transfer, the disks come pre-formatted for the Mac, but also come with instructions to easily reformat the disks for use on Windows systems.

Already compatible with Mac OS X Time Machine, the My Book Studio Edition II also comes with more backup software if desired, although whether that is for both Macs and PCs, instead of Macs alone, is unknown at this stage.

The case the two drives are enclosed in not only looks smart, and has a nifty white front light display showing when the drive is in operation and allowing you to see at a glance how much space is available on your storage system.

The casing also opens up easily and with the lifting of a bar pops out either drive without recourse to a screwdriver, making the replacement of drives an easy task if ever needed.

In addition, Firewire 400/800, USB 2.0 and eSATA connections are supported, and the RAID 0 (striped) configuration is set as standard to ensure fast operation for tasks such as video editing is assured.

However, the drive is also capable of being set to RAID 1 (mirrored) configuration, so you end up with only 1TB of storage on the first drive, with the second 1TB drive an exact duplicate of the first, if ever needed.

WD says the drive will store, on an individual basis if it were used only for the following types of data (no mixing of data types) up to 571,400 digital photos, up to 500,000 songs (MP3), up to 50,000 songs (uncompressed CD quality), up to 150 hours of Digital Video (DV), up to 880 hours of DVD quality video and up to 240 hours of HD video.

Obviously any mix of these data types lowers the amount of each than it can store, but filling 2TB won't be done overnight.

Because of the “eco” nature of the drives at the casing, no fans are required, keeping noise levels as low as possible, while using only one third the power of “standard” dual-drive external storage systems.
 
Jim Welsh, Veep and GM of WD’s branded products and consumer electronics groups said: “WD developed the My Book Studio Edition II external drives to satisfy the needs of Mac enthusiasts and creative professionals who require extra-fast performance, but also want it to be as environmentally friendly as possible."

Welsh continued: "Configured with RAID 0 out of the box, photographers, graphic artists, videographers, and others who require large amounts of storage will experience high performance combined with power savings and quiet operation when they use the new My Book Studio Edition II storage system.”

Please read on to page 2 for details of the RAID 0 configuration.