WD Crams Two 3 TB Drives into One My Book
WD's new My Book external drive features 6 TB and four ways to connect.
Thursday Western Digital announced a new addition to its My Book external drive lineup offering a whopping 6 TB of HDD storage. Labeled as the My Book Studio Edition II drive, this storage beast is aimed at creative pros of today and Mac enthusiasts who need to archive large HD video and photo files. It doesn't come cheap either, costing a meaty $549.99 USD.
"The My Book Studio Edition II drive now available with 6 TB of storage provides creative individuals with the expanded storage and bandwidth they need to effectively shoot, edit, and safely store their video productions without the need to compress their videos or reduce the overall quality of them for the sake of available space," said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD's branded products group.
The new 6 TB drive comes packed with two 3 TB hard drives mounted within the My Book enclosure. As seen in the image, users can easily access the HDDs should one need to be replaced. Interestingly enough, the drive also offers up four ways to interface with a Mac or PC including FireWire 800, FireWire 400, eSATA and USB 2.0 ports-- sorry, no USB 3.0 in this model.
According to WD, the external drive is formatted for Mac computers by default, but consumers can reformat the storage to work with Windows 7 and Vista (old-school XP can't handle the capacity). For energy-conscious consumers, WD said that the external drive uses approximately one-third less power than standard dual-drive external storage systems thanks to its WD GreenPower Technology. It's also quiet, designed with an efficient convection cooling system that doesn't require a fan.
As for other features, the drive provides automatic and continuous backup software, support for RAID configurations, compatibility with Apple Time Machine, and a built-in capacity gauge to see the available space at a glance.
My Book Studio Edition II dual-drive storage systems are available now at WD's online store (www.wdstore.com). MSRP for the My Book Studio Edition II 6 TB drive is $549.99 USD.
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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madukameguka I would rather buy the hard drives and put them in internally, I guess that's impossible with MAC so you need the enclosureReply -
sigma3d i have one of those drives with 2tb capacity. its not good for hd movie editing and other data intensive tasks. use it just for backup.Reply -
keither5150 The drives are $190 CAD each. A decent two bay NAS unit is $190 (DNS 323) Do the math, the price is not bad.Reply
If a Mac enthusiast has enough money to buy 6TB of content from itunes, he has $550 for a big external drive. A smart person would have bought a PC with some extra drive bays in the case. ( I have an Antec P190)I have room for 6 hard drives in the P190. 2TB hard drives sell for $79/each. Me thinks that external drives are a rip off. I guess it is hard to put an internal drive in an iMac. You may need some of that magic that Steve Jobs talks about. -
xambron I can barely fill my 600GB hard drive, mostly because I don't download in extremely high quality, use FLAC, play many games.Reply -
aevm I have recently bought a WD 2TB USB 3.0 drive for $130 CAD. Also a LaCie 2TB USB 3.0 drive for $120 CAD. Either of those is a better deal IMO. Buy 3, pay less than $400, get the same 6TB, and the speed is 3 times better.Reply
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dtemple Everybody missed the point. This comes formatted for Mac, and does not work on PC natively. This is designed for people who are perfectly okay with spending a whole lot of money on their stuff.Reply -
anacandor dtempleEverybody missed the point. This comes formatted for Mac, and does not work on PC natively. This is designed for people who are perfectly okay with spending a whole lot of money on their stuff.No, it's designed for people that are creative software users for music, picture and film editing. A LARGE proportion of this market uses Macs, so it doesn't surprise me at all that these hard drives are pre formated for Macs.Reply -
cknobman I feel sorry for anyone who interfaces with these drives via firewire or usb 2.0.Reply
6tb, oh no problem it will only be 3 weeks to get the data off of it when it fills up!