The Western Digital My Book Studio (2TB) ($380 list) is an extremely high-capacity drive in a smallish enclosure. Using Western Digital's first 2TB single-mechanism drive (as opposed to other 2TB hard drives that consist of two 1TB drives), the Studio gives the Mac artist (or Mac fan) a huge storage tank to hold videos, photos, and music. Its four interfaces mean that you'll always be able to connect the drive, no matter which Mac model you have. The Studio (2TB) can be reformatted for Windows use as well.Housed in a compact external chassis that measures 6.5 by 2.1 by 5.4 inches HWD (about the size of Webster's Compact Dictionary), the Studio is painted silver to match the aluminum Macs it's likely to be attached to. Like others in the current crop of My Book drives, it has a vertical bar of LEDs on the front panel that serves as a capacity indicator, in addition to the power/activity functions you expect in an external drive.
The rear panel has the power connector for the requisite power brick, a mini USB port, eSATA, and a pair of FireWire 800 ports. You can also connect to FireWire 400 with the included FireWire 800-to-400 adapter cable. You'll have to buy an eSATA cable separately, but then again, not many Macs have eSATA at this point. There's also a power button, but if you're using the drive with either USB or FireWire, the drive will automatically power up and shut down if it detects activity on those ports.
The system comes with a few utilities for the Mac, including WD Anywhere backup, a standard file-based backup program. I assume that most Mac users will use Time Machine, back up their files manually, or use the drive as an external repository. Drag-and-drop copying of our 1.2GB test folder took 34 seconds via USB and 24 seconds via FireWire 800—very quick times considering that the two-drive My Book Studio Edition II took 49 seconds on USB and 38 seconds with FireWire 800. The Studio II is slower because it has to manage two drive mechanisms at once. I formatted the Studio for Windows use without problem, though the format process did take a few hours. The drive doesn't come with WD tools for Windows, so if backup software is important to you, look at other drives like the Seagate FreeAgent Desk.
The My Book Studio (2TB) is a bit more expensive than the current 2TB version of the Studio II ($330 list), though the Studio II was $430 just three months ago. This translates into about 19 cents per GB for the 2TB Studio, which is pretty good for a drive with so many inputs. The Studio, however, is a bit faster than the Studio II, which makes up for some of the price difference. The 1TB Seagate FreeAgent Desk was only about 15 cents per GB when we reviewed it in April, but that's likely to drop soon, like all drive prices.
Regardless of price fluctuations, the My Book Studio is a good choice for the Mac-based multimedia maven who needs a lot of space with a fast interface. While Macs with eSATA are rare, just about all new Macs have FireWire 800 (except for the MacBook and MacBook Air), and all of them have USB 2.0. If you need a lot of external storage on a Mac but not the mirroring capability of the Studio II, take a look at the My Book Studio (2TB).
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