The My Book Studio II.
(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)A while ago, Western Digital announced new lines of My Book single volume external hard drives that offer 2TB of storage. It was only a matter of time before the company introduced its new dual-drive My Book Studio Edition II external hard drive with 4TB of storage.
The new drive, like its previous versions, is designed to work with Mac computers and comes with most connection options found in an external hard drive. The My Book Studio Edition II comes with USB 2.0, FireWire, and eSATA and is preformatted for Macs and compatible with Time Machine, the automatic backup solution of OS 10.5 or later.
The My Book Studio Edition II's internal hard drives are configured in RAID 0, which offers high performance and a large amount of storage. There's a catch though, with this configuration: if one of the hard drives fails, you'll also lose data on the other drive. WD is, however, very sure about its product and back the My Book Studio Edition II with a generous five-year warranty. The warranty, of course, only covers the hardware, not the data stored on it.
For this reason, the external drive works better as a backup drive or a drive that contains data backed up somewhere else. According to Western Digital, thanks to its performance, the My Book Studio Edition II is best used for video and photo-editing work.
The two internal hard drives (2TB each) used in the My Book Studio Edition II are the WD's GreenPower drives that use less energy than other hard drives and offer quiet performance. The My Book design includes a nice storage gauge to show how much storage space has been occupied. The chassis can be opened in a snap, making servicing or replacing the internal hard drives an easy job. You can only use WD's GreenPower hard drives with the My Book Studio Edition II.
The My Book Studio Edition II is available now for an estimated $650.
The new WD ShareSpace NAS server.
(Credit: Western Digital)Western Digital (WD), introduced on Tuesday its all-new NAS server called ShareSpace. The server somewhat resembles the design of the company's My Book external hard drives with easily accessible drive bays, eco-friendly hard drives, and quiet performance.
The new NAS server has four hard-drive bays: each can accommodate a 3.5-inch SATA internal hard drive up to 1TB in capacity, making the server's total storage space up to 4TB. The four hard drives can be installed or removed completely without using a tool and set up in RAID 0, RAID 1, or RAID 5 configurations. The NAS server features Gigabit Ethernet for network connectivity and three USB 2.0 ports for additional external storage or power management with a UPS unit. Unfortunately, these USB ports can't be used for any other USB-related functions such as print-serving or USB cameras.
The ShareSpace offers a good set of features found collectively in other NAS servers including FTP, iTunes servers, HTTP and FTP download capabilities, free Web-access via MioNet, and support for Microsoft Active Directory. The server also comes with backup software licensed to be used with up to three computers. Its front USB port can be used to quickly back up the entire contents of an external hard drive, such as the WD My Passport or any other USB hard drive.
The ShareSpace is equipped with WD's GreenPower hard drives, used also in the My Book series, that are said to use up to 33 percent less energy than other SATA hard drives. There are two versions of the ShareSpace, 2TB and 4TB, that cost $700 and $1,000, respectively, and both come with a three-year warranty.
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