Western Digital My Passport Studio 1 TB FireWire 800 External Hard Drive WDBK8A0010BBK-NESN
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- Massive capacity. All metal design.
- Dual FireWire 800 interfaces
- Password protection and hardware encryption
My Passport Studio comes standard with two super-fast FireWire 800 ports, massive capacity, password protection, and a MacBook-inspired, metal enclosure that make this drive the ideal companion for Mac professionals.
Wd Hard Drive
Western Digital My Passport Studio 1 TB FireWire 800 External Hard Drive WDBK8A0010BBK-NESN
List Price: $ 279.99
Price:
The Reviewer who gave it 1 Star is mistaken,
It does not matter that the internal HDD is a 5400rpm WD Scorpio Blue. (There is no such thing as a 5600rpm WD Scorpio Blue.)
The Firewire 800 interface can only handle an absolute maximum throughput of 98 MB/s (786 Mbit/s). USB 2.0 can only do 60 MB/s (480 Mbit/s).
The h2benchw 3.12 Max Read Throughput for the Western Digital WD Scorpio Blue WD10JPVT 1TB 5400rpm is 114.4 MB/s (915.2 Mbits/s).
Hence, the internal HDD is faster than the interfaces. If you need/want external storage with higher throughput you will have to go to USB 3.0, eSATA, or Thunderbolt; with SSD and/or RAID disks.
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Rugged and Compact,
The Western Digital My Passport Studio 1 TB FireWire 800 External Hard Drive WDBK8A0010BBK-NESN is a beautiful piece of solidly built hardware that asks you to trade a little bit of bulk (metal enclosure) for peace of mind.
SPACE AVAILABLE
You begin with 999.73 GB available, and 302.6 MB of something already on the disk, which means you have almost the entire disk at your disposal. I’d say that is pretty good.
SOFTWARE
The disk comes with some security and utility software you can install on your Mac (presumably, Windows users could reformat the drive and use it as well, but not the software). It enables you to do things like password protect your hard disk, wipe your data, and so forth. It claims on the website that it will encrypt your drive, but I don’t see a setting for that anywhere. Perhaps it is encrypted and I just don’t know it?
CONSTRUCTION
The disk is considerably heavier and larger than my sleek WD “Essential” drive, but the construction is much more rugged, with a thick metal casing. Compared to protected hard drives by other manufacturers, it is still relatively compact and lightweight. It is a difficult balance to strike, but WD has done a good job here.
SPEED
It seems pretty fast with Firewire, but to be honest, I don’t see a huge difference. Whatever the actual speed is, I suppose I feel better using Firewire instead of USB! Of course, it also comes with a USB connection if you want to go that route.
SUMMARY
If you are looking for a rugged, high-quality drive, with security features, and Firewire, then this is it. However, if you are more interested in a lightweight, inexpensive 1TB drive, then you may want to consider the WD “Essential.”
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Great HD,
I really like it. It comes with 2 cables, a usb, and a firewire 800 cable. the software included is okay but won’t do much more than what “disk utility” can do on your mac. you can erase it using disk utility and add a password option (this works with osx 10.7 and above). i’ve been using with time machine on a macbook air and macbook pro and it works great. It feels like it is very high quality and very dense and sturdy. if you want to travel light this may be a little on the heavy side. overall, i would recommend it, especially if you are looking for something that looks good next to your mac. there are other drives out there that can do the same thing for less, but for me, i like something that looks good next to my macbook pro.
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