Product: Western Digital 1TB MyBook Studio Edition WDH1W10000N
Manufacturer: Western Digital
MSRP: $299.99
Lowest Historical Price: $150 [History]

Introduction
It used to be that in order to upgrade your storage capacity, you'd have to rip open your computer case and install a new hard drive. That task proved daunting for many a Geek Squad customer, causing untold amounts of cash to be blown on the simple service of installing and formatting a new hard drive. Enter external hard drives. External hard drives have exploded in popularity in the past few years because they give users an easy way to expand their storage capacity, without the headaches of a Geek Squad or FireDogs (or worse, Fry's tech) visit. Here we check out the Western Digital 1TB MyBook Studio Edition Quad-Interface Hard Drive.



Specs
What was once considered an outrageous amount of storage, 1 Terabyte, can now be bought without an outrageous amount of wallet damage. In fact, this particular drive only set me back $150 on 6/20/08 due to a particularly good deal at Frys (now expired). This drive aims to put simple USB 2.0 only drives to shame: It offers a veritable buffet of interface options including USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSATA interfaces.



Be aware that this particular model (WDH1W10000N) comes formatted for Apple computers. It is a simple step to format it for Windows, and that's exactly what I did. I've used the drive for over two months now as a media archive drive for all of my photos and videos, and it has been reliable for that purpose.



The enclosure itself is silver, with "Morse code" style ventilation holes to cool the drive without the use of any fans. That means the drive is virtually silent, albeit for hearing the drive itself as it accesses data. It is designed to fit right in with other WD MyBook style drives.

Performance
For performance testing, I used a 743MB file and timed the read/write speeds moving the file between the MyBook and my regular desktop hard drive. The test system is my personal PC as detailed in this earlier review. The FireWire 800 transfer rates were not tested since the test system does not support it.



The chart shows the drive's read/write speed for the test file. As it turns out, the read and write speeds were the same, so they are combined in the chart. The result shows that eSATA has a large lead (by a factor of two) in performance over FireWire 400 and USB 2.0, with FireWire being only incrementally better than USB. If you're using this drive for performance applications where transfer rates are critical, eSATA is the interface you want to use.

Conclusion
I don't have anything bad to say about this product. It is stylishly designed and performs well in all of its intended functions. The quad-interface design gives exceptional connectivity options, and the hard drive automatically spins down to save power when it isn't being accessed. Since it is a targeted Mac product, we haven't seen many discounts for it (certainly none that bring it down to what I paid two months ago at $150), but when it does eventually drop to a more pallatable price I would recommend it without hesitation.

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