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Topic
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WD My Book Studio Edition II a Good Option? Also, What About OS X 10.5?
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This question is answered.
"Helpful" answers available: 2
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"Solved" answers available: 1
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Posts:
5
From:
Houston, TX
Registered:
Apr 10, 2009
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WD My Book Studio Edition II a Good Option? Also, What About OS X 10.5?
Posted:
Nov 1, 2009 6:55 PM
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I'm contemplating the purchase of a new WD 1TB My Book Studio II external hard drive. Space on my 80 GB internal drive is just about dried up, and I'm looking for an external HD option. I'm looking to use the external drive primarily for backup and for storing music and photos.
The WD My Book Studio II has had mixed reviews, but I'm wondering if any eMac users have gone this route? If not, has anyone ventured into any other 1 TB external HDs?
I'm also contemplating upgrading to Leopard (10.5). Will my 1GHZ G4 processor and 1 GB RAM be able to run Leopard efficiently?
Thank you.
eMac
Mac OS X (10.4.11)
1GHZ PowerPC G4
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Posts:
14,170
From:
New England, USA
Registered:
Jul 21, 2004
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Re: WD My Book Studio Edition II a Good Option? Also, What About OS X 10.5?
Posted:
Nov 2, 2009 1:15 PM
in response to: Michael400
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Any of the main name brand drives will have a mixed bag of reviews because there are so many of them and so many different people and setups using them, you will find both good and bad reviews. And then the other brands you barely have heard of will often have few reviews simply due to how much fewer of them there are vs the WD book drives or the Seagate models, etc. Meaning, you have to take a lot of the reviews with a grain of salt.
That said, one thing I noted in your post is that you say your 80GB is about used up and you want an external to backup and to (I assume) offload music and photos to free up room on the internal. Right? If that is the case, PLEASE keep in mind that those offloaded files are NOT backed up, but simply relocated. If they only exist on the external, then you still risk losing them with a drive crash. Because of this, might I suggest that you may want to invest in TWO external drives? One to use as a second drive on your system to offload the internal and then a second external that can be used for backing up BOTH your other drives (the eMac's internal and the external "offload" drive).
As to the drive itself, I do like that you are looking at a FW800 capable drive. While the eMac only supports FW400, as someone who recently moved from an eMac to a new iMac, buying with an upgrade path to a new Mac is not a bad idea. On the other hand, you will be paying a bit more for this drive due to FW800 that you will not initially be able to use on the eMac. But you should be sure to get a drive with at least FW400 because your eMac does not support USB2 speeds.
I can not comment on the OS upgrade. My eMac currently still sits at 10.4.x so I have no first hand experience.
Patrick
iMac 24" 2.66GHz eMac 1.25GHz (OS 10.4.11)
Mac OS X (10.5.7)
Canon iP4200 printer Many Ext Drives 30GB and 80GB 5th Gen iPods
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Posts:
5
From:
Houston, TX
Registered:
Apr 10, 2009
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Re: WD My Book Studio Edition II a Good Option? Also, What About OS X 10.5?
Posted:
Nov 2, 2009 7:59 PM
in response to: PT
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Patrick ...
I do greatly appreciate you taking the time to respond. To answer your question, yes, offloading music and photos is my primary motive. And I duly note your concern about the offloaded files not being backed up. One of the things that drew me to the WD My Book Studio Edition II is that it's a dual drive. I'm assuming that means if one of the two 500 GB drives crashes the other still works. Or am I misunderstood?
Michael
eMac
1GHZ PowerPC G4
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Posts:
14,170
From:
New England, USA
Registered:
Jul 21, 2004
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Re: WD My Book Studio Edition II a Good Option? Also, What About OS X 10.5?
Posted:
Nov 3, 2009 12:23 PM
in response to: Michael400
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It would appear that the drive in question supports either Raid 0 or Raid 1 configuration.
In Raid 0 (striped) mode, both drives are combined to form a single volume and you get the full capacity of your enclosure available (a 1TB drive made up of two 500GB drives will give you 1TB of storage). The advantage of RAID 0 is that data can be written to both drives at the same time speeding up access time, so a single file is broken up across the two drives with some of the data on one and some on the other. The disadvantage of this configuration is that if you lose either drive, you lose the whole volume. While you might be able to recover some stuff off the other drive, because a lot of files are likely to be spread over both drives, you likely won't recover that much.
In Raid 1 (mirror) mode, the drives are duplicates of each other. So every file you write to the drive is copied fully onto both drives. The advantage of this configuration is that your data is automatically redundantly backed up on both drives so if one goes bad, the other can still operate and you do not lose any data. The disadvantage of this setup is because one drive is used to mirror the other, you only have half the drive's capacity available to you. So your "1TB" drive will become a 500GB drive but with a built in backup.
Since you would be operating off FW400 anyway and not using the full speed advantages of either FW800 or SATA, then speed is already compromised and Raid 0 is not all that advantageous to you unless you truly need all 1TB as a single volume. Therefore I recommend Raid 1. Your offloaded files will be backed up on the redundant drive in the enclosure and 500GB is still probably plenty if you are only using an 80GB drive now.
Hope that helps,
Patrick
iMac 24" 2.66GHz eMac 1.25GHz (OS 10.4.11)
Mac OS X (10.5.7)
Canon iP4200 printer Many Ext Drives 30GB and 80GB 5th Gen iPods
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Posts:
5
From:
Houston, TX
Registered:
Apr 10, 2009
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Re: WD My Book Studio Edition II a Good Option? Also, What About OS X 10.5?
Posted:
Nov 3, 2009 7:54 PM
in response to: PT
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Patrick ...
Yes, this helps tremendously. And yes, my plan would be to go with the mirror mode. Even though, as you point out, my storage capacity would be effectively cut in half, my concern is making sure I have a backup. I'll also be able to "clean the plate" from my internal drive.
Thank you once again.
Michael
eMac
1GHZ PowerPC G4
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Posts:
14,170
From:
New England, USA
Registered:
Jul 21, 2004
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Re: WD My Book Studio Edition II a Good Option? Also, What About OS X 10.5?
Posted:
Nov 4, 2009 12:47 PM
in response to: Michael400
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Glad to be of help.
Patrick
iMac 24" 2.66GHz eMac 1.25GHz (OS 10.4.11)
Mac OS X (10.5.7)
Canon iP4200 printer Many Ext Drives 30GB and 80GB 5th Gen iPods
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Posts:
34
From:
Lancaster, United Kingdom
Registered:
Apr 2, 2008
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Re: WD My Book Studio Edition II a Good Option? Also, What About OS X 10.5?
Posted:
Nov 5, 2009 1:46 AM
in response to: Michael400
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I use 10.5.8, with next to no difficulty - the occasional slight holdup is, I feel, more than compensated for by everything else Leopard's got going for it. I certainly don't regret it at all (unlike switching to iTunes 9...).
Mine (as you've probably already noticed) is the 1.25 GHz, though, so I have no idea how much difference that quarter-GHz would make.
Sorry, that wasn't actually helpful at all, was it?
G4 eMac (1.25 GHz, 1GB RAM)
Mac OS X (10.5.8)
120 GB iPod Classic, 1 GB iPod Shuffle
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Posts:
5
From:
Houston, TX
Registered:
Apr 10, 2009
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Re: WD My Book Studio Edition II a Good Option? Also, What About OS X 10.5?
Posted:
Nov 5, 2009 6:20 PM
in response to: UraGraymalkin
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UraGraymalkin, I certainly appreciate your feedback. And yes, it was helpful.
I just won an eBay bid for a used PowerBook, and I'm getting the full retail version of Leopard with it. My plan is to transfer my files to the new WD external hard drive that I bought (also on eBay). Once those files are safely copied over and backed up, I'm going to do a clean install of Leopard on my eMac.
Thanks again.
Michael
eMac
Mac OS X (10.4.11)
1GHZ PowerPC G4
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