The Cons: It does not support USB 3.0. It runs warm and can seem buggy at times. You have to buy an eSATA cable separately.

Summary: The My Book Studio Edition II is a good external hard drive for those who need and want a ton of storage.  Although, the firmware can seem to be faulty at times.

Details: Boasting 6TB of storage this is one of the largest external hard drives currently out on the market. It has different types of inputs and you can replace the hard drives within it fairly easily, but these drives have to be powergreen drives from western digital is the only thing.  Sadly, the drive is not USB 3.0 compliant and can seem to take a bit to be recognized on a new system.

But this is fine because it offers fast speeds and a price that is actually a good one for what you get.   If size and ease of use is what you want in an

Western Digital My Book Studio Edition 2

hard drive then it does not get much better than this.  It will work for both Windows and Mac operating systems.

The My Book Studio Edition II has  a great, easy access design.  The door is on the top where it can be easily opened without any kind of tools to replace the hard drives if necessary.
Look at the front, it has a vertical white light that is a status light for the drive.  Then, on the back are all the inputs which include USB 2.0, Firewire for both 400 and 800 and a eSATA slot.  It comes with all the cables for these slots besides the eSATA one. This drive also does not support USB 3.0 mainly because it is compatible with both Mac and PC.  Mac of course does not support USB 3.0 yet.

Also you’ll see a power button on the back which is used to turn it on and off.  It has a sleep mode also that will make it go dormant after about 10 minutes of non-use.  Sadly, there is noway to turn this feature off.  Also, when you plug this external hard drive in it may take about 2 minutes or so for it to be recognized by your system. This is the buggy firmware problem mentioned above.  Hopefully this is just a temporary problem that will be fixed with an update in the future.

The Western Digital My Book Studio Edition 2 comes preformatted for Mac but can easily be reformatted for PCs with the included software.


Performance
The Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II performs nicely overall.

When using eSATA it performed at 99mbps writing and 109mbps reading.  This is practically just as fast as a USB 3.0 connection which is fast. When using USB 2.0 it  the writing speeds were 26mbps and 46mbps for reading which is a little above average. When using Firewire 400 the speeds were 20mbps for writing and 42mbps for reading.

Warranty
The warranty is 5 years which is a above average for a warranty on a external hard drive.  Customers support seems to be excellent with a dedicated area on western digital’s site just for this drive.

Conclusion
This is a great drive for both Mac and PC especially if you are looking for the storage space.  The speeds overall are good. If you are looking for pure speed then there are faster drives for PC’s, but doesn’t get much better than this in terms of Mac.

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The Cons: The Seagate GoFlex Satellite can only handle 3 wireless users at one time.  It does not have internet access and the USB 3.0 speed is lacking somewhat compared to other USB 3.0 external hard drives.

Summary: This is a great external hard drive the the hardcore mobile, portable users.  If you are an avid Ipad user then this external hard drive is almost a must-have. It has 500gb of storage and this should serve to be plenty for people on the go all the time.

Seagate has impressed many with the GoFlex line of external hard drives with all the flexibility they offer, but impressed us yet again with the GoFlex Satellite.

The Satellite is a portable external hard drive with a battery and a Wifi access point that can be accessed to transfer data back and forth to computers.  This has become the most popular external hard drive for Ipad users because the Ipad has somewhat of a storage constraint.  With the

seagate goflex satellite

GoFlex Satellite the storage constraint is no more.

This drive is around the $200 mark and supports USB 3.0 which had fast speeds in tests.  It will work with both Mac and Windows operating systems.  This drive can prove to be an excellent extra storage drive for those who are always on the go.

Design And Features
Like all the external hard drives in the Seagate GoFlex line the Satellite also comes in 2 pieces which is the hard drive itself at 2.5 inches (laptop size) and then the adapter that is attached.  Both are housed in a plastic casing.  The adapter has a male SATA connector and a miniUSB 3.0 port.  It has a capacity of 500gb. It comes with a miniUSB3.0 cable which is both the power and data cable.  There is also a separate cable provided for power that can be plugged into a USB port of any computer.  It also includes a car charger and wall outlet adapter.

The wirless-n access point can be accessed by up to 3 people at the same time.  Data can be transferred back and forth over this network to and from the computers to the hard drive.  This is also excellent for streaming music or movies to all 3 of the users at the same time also.


Speed and Performance
Testing results were gathered by doing both wirelessly and as a regular external hard drive that is hooked up directly.

Wirelessly, it was able to broadcast a signal up to 100 ft. away.  The battery lasted about 5 hours with continuous use.  The drive got warm as with most hard drives that do the same. When hooked up directly to USB2.0 it had write and read speeds of 29mbps and 37mbps.  When using USB3.0 it was no quite as fast as other external hard drives using USB3.0 with write and read speeds coming in at 69mbps and 76mbps.  Not that this is at all slow, but just a little slower that some of the fastest external hard drives that support USB3.0.

Warranty
The Seagate Goflex Satellite offers a 3 year warranty.  This is decent when most at least offer a 2 year.

Conclusion
It is an all around must-have drive for Ipad users who are busy on the go all the time.  If you do not need the portable features offered, then there are some other hard drives like the Seagate GoFlex Desk 4TB that would serve you fine.  The main feature about the Satellite is it can be accessed wirelessly and stream music, video, and data over a network to 3 users at the same time.

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The Cons: This hard drive is a bit pricey.  The drive can fall over easily when sitting upright.

Summary: It supports USB 3.0 and has great performance and high capacity.
The Seagate 4TB GoFlex Desk is a newer version of the FreeAgent GoFlex Desk with more capacity.  It has 4TB of storage space and supports the faster USB 3.0.  It also performs quite nicely.

The hard drive is designed to stand upright like a computer tower for example.  The price is around twice as much.

If you are wanting an external hard drive that supports both Mac and Windows that doesn’t have to be reformatted every time

Seagate 4tb GoFlex Desk

you switch between the two the Seagate 4TB GoFlex Desk will probably be a good buy for you.  If you do not need all the space (4TB) then you might want to look into the prior version that has 1tb and you can always get an adapter for USB 3.0.  This would save you some money.

Design and Features
The Seagate GoFlex Desk looks just about the same as it’s previous version besides the corners are a little more rounded.  The drive comes together in two pieces basically.  The hard drive and the adapter are together in one plastic casing and at the bottom you have both a female and male SATA connectors.

The external hard drive comes included with a USB 3.0 adapter and then the mini cable to go with it.  It will work with all previous USB versions also like USB 2.0 for example.  You can also still use it with eSATA and Firewire, but you will have to buy a separate adapter for this and they usually aren’t too cheap with each one ranging around the $30 mark.

The great thing about the SATA adapter that comes with this hard drive is that you can use it with any internal SATA hard drive if you wanted to.  This can save some time if you are into computer repair or building computers etc.

The USB 3.0 adapter that is included is also like the base of the hard drive when it sits vertically and on this base there is a LED storage guage.  The guage has 4 led white lights that roughly each represent 25% of your hard drive’s capacity.


Performance
The Seagate GoFlex did very well in terms of performance and speed using USB 3.0 and 2.0.

When using USB 3.0: Write speeds were 87mbps.  This is 7.3mbps faster than the prior version. Read speeds were 99mbps which again was better than the prior version.

When using USB 2.0: Writes speeds were 28.5mbps and read speeds were 32.7mbps.  This is actually fast for USB 2.0 compared to other external hard drives tested.

Warranty
Seagate offers a 2 year warranty on the drive.  This is average compared to most warranties on external hard drives.  A lot of the time you can find warranties on them for up to 5 years.

Conclusion
This drive is a great performing drive all around with  very high capacity if you need all that space.  It is fast and dependable and versatile since you can use it with both Mac and Windows without reformatting every time.  Only caution I would advise is be careful when you have it sitting in the vertical position because it can tumble over easily.

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The Cons: It does not support USB 3.0 and still is a little pricey.

Summary: This external hard drive is strictly for Mac users and it is a fast portable drive.

Design and features
The WD My Passport Studio is definitely sleek.  It has a storage capacity of 1TB which is plenty for most users. It is fully covered in metal with two

WD my passport studio

different colors being mostly black and the remaining is white. It has two Firewire 800 inputs on the top along with one USB 2.0 slot.  Also the power light is on top that shines blue when it is on.  This drive also works with Firewire 400.  The drive will come with the Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 cables, but you will need to buy a cable if you are wanting to use Firewire 400.  It also is powered through these cables so you do not need a power cable of any sort.  Less cables = good, agree?

If you know anything about the previous model you will know that it came with an electric label or a storage gauge.  This one does not.  This one just keeps it simple and sleek. It is already preformatted for Mac systems that are running OS 10.4 or later.  Once you plug the external hard drive in and get into it, you will see the installer for the WD Utilities and security apps.  The drive utilities are tools for reformatting, diagnosing the drive, and for a sleep timer is you choose.  You can also create a password on the drive to prevent  unauthorized access.

Mac doesn’t support USB 3.0 connections usually, so if you are a Windows user look elsewhere. Even though this drive can be formatted into NTFS to comply with Windows it would be a waste due to the lack of supporting 3.0 which means it would be really slow.