Hard Sex: Western Digital's My Book desktop drives

Now that I have your attention, you know as well as any other photographer that digital storage devices are as essential as they are unsexy -- by and large just boxes with a few plugs and a light or two. And external hard drives big enough to back up the contents of your computer become all but invisible when attached, doing their own thing with automatic backup software. You hardly know they're there -- until your computer crashes.

Western Digital's My Book external desktop hard drives are a different story, pun intended. They are sexy, in the sort of industrial-chic way that Apple has perfected. Upright and, well, booklike in shape -- though with a beautifully rounded spine --  they have an elegant satin-metal finish. In fact the My Book Studio Edition I've been testing comes in a silver tone that perfectly matches my G5 tower. (Now if only my socks matched.)

The My Book drives have a cool-looking ventilation grill with parallel rows of rounded dots and dashes evocative of my G5's perforations. The grill runs along the top and one side of the unit, where the pages would be in a real book. (Details on that grill in a minute.) More than any third-party product I can think of, the My Book drives look like they could've been designed by Apple itself.

The My Book Studio Edition comes formatted for Mac, though you can easily reformat it for PC. (Other models come PC-formatted.) I've had the 1TB version hooked up for several months to my home G5, with which it has performed flawlessly behind the scenes using Apple's Time Machine to back up the computer's considerable contents. (That could be the first time I've used the acronym for terabyte in a specific product writeup.) I connected the drive by FireWire 800, but in addition to a supplied FireWire 400 cable (for backwards compatibility) there are ports for USB 2.0 and super-fast eSATA. With FireWire and USB connections the drive powers on and off with your computer, and goes into standby mode after 10 minutes of inactivity. (The software, including Western Digital's own backup utility, loads directly from the drive when you plug it in, no separate CD required.)

If you know Morse Code -- which only recently acquired the signal pattern for the @ symbol so dear to the digital age, the first addition since World War II -- you may not have to spring for your own My Book drive. (They are highly affordable, however: The 1TB My Book I've been using sells for as little as $330; the 320GB, smallest of the lot, for as little as $165.) Somewhere among the dots and dashes of the My Book family's ventilation grill is hidden a message in that long-short-long telegraphic cypher of yore. If you can find and translate the message you'll be entered in a drawing for a drive. Western Digital is giving away one drive a day until the end of the promotion, on February 12. For details go to crackthewdcode.com.

And visit wdc.com to find out more about Western Digital's robust and varied drive line, which includes dual-drive RAID versions for Mac and PC (the My Book Pro Edition II and the My Book Premium Edition II); versions for network storage and DVR expansion; the internal EIDE and SATA drives that are the core of Western Digital's huge OEM business; and portable drives such as the Passport. (Most of these, however, are not sexy.)

The My Book drive sits behind my monitor, out of sight except for the blue glow from the long LED on its "spine." I'm thinking I'll move it out in front where it can be seen, just so I can admire it. -- Russell Hart

Comments

[Jeroen Akershoek]

Thanks for this review. I am considering buying such a drive. I tried a LaCie Porsche 750 GB, but it was a disappointment because of the noise the drive created. I could hear it reading and writing across the room (7 meters distance).

My iMac is silent, and I expect an external harddrive standing on my desk to be the same. I am curious about your experience with this.

Regards,
Jeroen Akershoek

[Russell Hart]

Jeroen--The drive is very, very quiet. Of course my Mac G5, with its four fans, kind of drowns it out anyway!
Russell

[Jeroen Akershoek]

Thanks for your response Russell. I bought one today, and I must say I am very pleased. Like you said, it is VERY quiet. Much, much better than the LaCie which I have returned to the store.

Regards, Jeroen

[PopX]

Thanks for the noise information. I love speed, but I love much more a quiet drive. I have retuned 20 LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk 1TB (version 2) because of the horrible noise they all make. I may try this My Book Studio Edition after years purchasing LaCie.

[theneostudio]

hi

[Cory]

I bought the pro version of this drive with builtin RAID and I am a bit disappointed...

My first drive died after ~6months and I'm betting that the warranty replaced drive I now have is heading towards the same fate. The drive is simply not very good at cooling itself. Period.

I almost never hear the thing... but it also stays very, very warm. If I unplug the drive, and plug it back in it seems to realize exactly how warm it is and turn the fans on full blast for 10-20 minutes. Something that could have been avoided if it would have simply run the fans at a higher RPM during normal operation.

WD has sacrificed cooling in the name of quiet operation and it leads to a shiny product that looks nice on the outside... but when you get down to it, it isn't all that great. Kinda like a mac ;p