Wondering if anyone has used on of these drives? Any comments about them?

My Book Studio Edition II 2 TB Hard Drives ( WDH2Q20000 )

They appear to be Generation 1 in a series that is yet to come, yet they don't appear to have had particularly good reviews, as Western Digital have only supplied the user with RAID 0 and RAID 1, as options, which means they are attempting to catch the market on speed without reliability, or choice as to what other kinds of HDDs can go in it.

That's about all I know - though there are plenty of reviews from users all over internet - and many have had... well... not so good experiences thus far...

I've got a 2Tb WD MyBook Premium II external drive that I've never had any problems with. I was running it off firewire800 with the iMac and now firewire400 with the mini and it works without any drama's.

My only complaint is that the software is incredibly lame and it was a bit finicky to set up. I've never done anything with the Studio edition, but judging by Clockworks link, I'd stear clear of it for now.

I'd beware the NAS drives from WD.

Apparently they rigourously enforce DRM by checking file types.

I've just finished putting my entire CD collection onto a non NAS WD drive and I plan to do the same with my DVDs. I would hate to have problems later trying to share the files / play them over Airport / etc.

I find DRM very scary and steer clear of these situations where possible. If it wasn't for the DRM issue I would have bought that same drive.

WD are up front about it all. See their website for allowed file formats. Read their website carefully. Quite clearly it seems, if I put a music file up then other users can't automatically share it, despite my sys prefs sharing prefs and AEBS prefs. Note when they talk about account based access. Ouch!

Um, if you're a single computer/account household then no probs I'd reckon.

OK thanks peoples..interesting. I bought my first WD drive (1TB USB MY BOOKY thingy or whatever they call it) recently..looks good but I havent plugged it in yet.
Only reason I asked about the NAS one is I noticed they are advertising it as Mac Ready and compatible with Time Machine...which my Maxtor NAS 1TB is NOT.

That's a real pity it ain't TM compatible. Have you checked around? Maxtor is a common enough brand that it's probably been talked about heaps. Might be as simple as a small file change somewhere or whatever to get it to work with TM.

(I have Tiger but I noticed that all the UNIX software for TM is already in my Mac - all it lacks is the GUI. On my list of things to do is to get TM working under Tiger for me)

I recently upgraded my externals and they are all WD brand. Yeah they look great but as someone else remarked around here - a PLASTIC brushed aluminium look doesn't help with heat dissipation and the WDs run hot and as loud as a hair dryer at times. No exaggeration.

If yours has auto power down then great. It will work sometimes. Better than not at all.

Some bad reports about FW400 just NOT working at all. I assume USB2 is mostly faster than FW400 so I won't go down the FW400 path at all.

WTF?

Raid1 has redunancy...

and so what if a User buys a WD MyBook and doesn't wanna use RAID 1?