As I am a photographer and videographer, I often put external hard drives under pressure due to the need I have for them to be fast. The Western Digital Mybook Studio series hasn't let me down yet! This is the second hard drive in the series I've bought. It is quite a well built hard drive system With a nice, strong, grey outside coating. The white vents aren't all that tough however and can be a bit bendy and flimsy. The power button on the back sometimes moves in halves rather than as a whole which could potentially cause an issue in the future. The status LCD on the front is brilliant, allowing me to identify which of my drives is which as both are the same physical size. The read/write status light gives a good, easy to understand communication of what the drive is up to. Oddly, the drive came with two Firewire 800 to 400 cables and no 800 to 800 cable which was inconvenient, although I already had two of those which made that OK.

In use, the hard drive responds quickly with no noticeable lag in data and communication with my Mac. The 7200rpm drive within is as fast as it says, allowing me to do special effects editing and colour grading on the fly straight off the disk which makes it extremely convenient. The USB and Firewire interfaces both work properly and quickly and the power supply plugs are a snug fit. The only real gripe I have with these drives is the WD Smartware backup software they come packaged with which is clunky, annoying, inconvenient and must be turned off from within itself.

I would definitely recommend these drives to anyone!