WD My Book Studio 1 TB USB 2.0/FireWire 800/400, Desktop External Hard Drive

Don't listen to them!!!! It appears that many of these buyers didn't read the part about this drive being designed and optimized for the Mac and Time Machine. They all seem to be using this with their PC and complaining that there's a problem. I plugged the drive in, it was recognized immediately and I turned on Time Machine. Done! I downloaded the software suite, installed it, Done. I have experienced no intrusion or overbearance. I either open the software or not. I expected it to be popping up every few seconds the way it was described here. Again, no problems so far. The drive is less than whisper quiet. I like the display although it's not necessary for most people.Again, if you have a Mac and you need a good drive for Time Machine, this is a very good one. If you have a PC, it sounds like you may have issues, read the info before buying. It's not Amazon's or Western Digital's fault if you buy the wrong product, is it?

Got a new IMac with a 2Tb HD. Needed a quality backup HD. Thought about going with the Apple 2Tb wireless HD but at almost $500 and marginal reviews, there was no way. Have had a WD 500Gb Passport for a few years and it has worked well. This 2Tb HD has worked great with the IMac Time Machine App. Setup in Time Machine was done in about 30 seconds. The backups have happened without a hitch. Have not yet needed to recover any files but they are all there just in case. Did not use the WD provided SW as I did not care for the SW that came with the Passport.

Just received the drive. Hooked it up with Firewire to my iMac running OsX 10.6 Snow Leopard. Set up was a breeze -- I just plugged it in and connected to computer according to the instructions enclosed with the drive and it was ready to use. My iMac automatically recognized it and I was ready to use it in about 1 minute flat.As some reviewers have noted, when the drive is connected a virtual CD icon appears on the desktop. I installed the WD software on this virtual drive in order to personalize the display on the front of the drive. The software interface is very nice and very user-friendly. However, I have not run the backup software because I elected to use Time Machine to do my backups. Time Machine backed up to the drive with no problems.I was concerned about the virtual CD referred to by some other reviewers because I also don't like to clutter up my desktop with icons. However, I was pleased to find that removing this virtual CD is very straightforward. Just click on the WD icon that appears in the menu bar of the Finder, and select "Unmount CD" The virtual CD icon disappears and can be made to reappear at any time by clicking on the same icon and selecting "Mount CD". There is no need to download any software to do this, and no problem doing this with the My Book Studio, contrary to some previous reviews!The drive itself feels solid. The housing is plastic, but it looks good and does not feel cheap. The drive is also fairly quiet -- certainly quieter than the Maxtor One Touch external drive that this drive has replaced -- and I like the energy saver features.Overall I am very happy with my purchase so far and can reassure any readers out there that there is no reason to be concerned about the software or the virtual CD.

This is the 6th WD HD I have in my collection. I am a data hog. And a total mac head. So When I read reviews like the ones above, and then I see that Amazon has stopped shipping the device because everyone is pissed at the Smartware, I find it a bit unfair. This is a good product with bad software. But then again, Western Digital is a Hard Drive company, not a backup company.Your macs come with Time machine. Why would you want to use Smartware? If you don't want to use time machine, why not use Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich software? TIme machine works fine. If your still on 10.4 Tiger, then clone your system. But 10.5 came out over 3 years ago, and is the best Mac OS to date.So instead of convincing amazon that there is a problem with this device, call WD. I admit, the firmware update didn't seem to do anything for my drive, but my drive is backing up just fine using Time Machine.IF YOU IGNORE THE INCLUDED SOFTWARE, THIS IS A GREAT, FAST, DEPENDABLE DRIVE. PERIOD.

As pro photographers, we own dozens of My Book drives. They have been perfect for archiving/delivering client projects. However, in this model, Western Digital took a big step backward. They mysteriously dropped the eSATA port (which was on this model a few months ago). This means that copying terrabytes of data to the drive takes a REALLY long time now.Also, it shipped with outdated firmware (which they theoretically updated, but then pulled from their site); outdated utility software which could not recognize the drive, etc. The first call to support was a disaster, they tried to cut 4 months off the warranty(!), and then did not understand the product, etc. The third call got a bit better, but still no way to format the entire drive (they permanently partition a slice for their software which only sporadically mounts, often giving error messages, and eats into the net-available space).Often, under Snow Leopard 10.6.3, mmounting the drive gives a "scary" error message "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer... ignore / eject." While we understand that it's referring to the stupid utility partition, Our less technical clients could freak out. In any event, such messages do not inspire confidence in the drive's data integrity.The "fancy" software configurable label on the spine is pretty lame - it only shows the amount used when you use their (poor) backup program! Also, the drive label only accepts 12, DOS characters (all upper case, etc).It's really too bad that these once-wonderful drives have been so arbitrarily crippled.