Western Digital My Book Studio external hard drive review
£120 (Guide) / £70 (Street)
External hard drive (1TB capacity)
If your desk is anything like ours then there are probably a dozen CF cards scattered around, and the chance of finding an image in a hurry are slim. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Knowing that this disorganisation couldn’t continue, I decided to invest in an external hard drive. For just more than £100, Western Digital's My Book Studio offers a whopping 1TB – that’s 1,000GB, although the effective memory when installed is around 950GB.
For the average enthusiast, who spends their weekends snapping away, 1TB (terabyte) should be enough memory to hold at least a year’s worth of work, keeping your image files organised so you don’t overwrite them while they’re still sat on your memory cards.
About the size of a hardback book, the My Book is portable and should fit easily into the most modest camera bag. It runs from a main plug, but unlike other hard drives I’ve used, it’s incredibly quiet, both when idling and transferring files.
Speaking of transferring files, I found the My Book to be lightning fast at receiving and exporting. A folder containing 1GB was imported in around 50 seconds!
The slickly-designed hard drive connects to your laptop via FireWire or USB and also features a port for a security cable. You’ll find some free back-up software already installed on the hard drive, but because the My Book is pre-formatted for a Macintosh, I chose to use the Time Machine back-up facility instead.
Everything on my cluttered laptop was transferred within ten minutes, freeing up valuable space and memory. The digital gauge on the front of the hard drive indicates exactly how much free space is available.
If I have one gripe with this piece of kit, and it is a small gripe, it has to be its shape. While it’s a good thing that it's small and portable, the My Book can topple over quite easily with the slightest knock. It certainly looks robust enough to take any bumps, but I’d rather not put this to the test.
For a part-time or full-time photographer, a decent external hard drive is a must. Computers and even memory cards can go wrong and having to explain why you can’t supply the images you were commissioned to shoot will end up costing you a lot more than £120. Much worse, it could cost you your reputation.
Verdict:A value-for-money external hard drive that benefits from a slick design and excellent software. For the price, you'd be crazy not to buy one!
Like: We like the price, design and fast performance of this drive
Dislike: Not much, but a slightly better design to offer a little more stability wouldn't go amiss
Rating: 5/5
