help with WDmyBookStudioII!

[zoran]

Suppose i purchase a WD MyBookStudio II edition...
1. Is the 6TBdrive solution, a combination of 2x3TB drives and the 4TB solution, a combination of 2x2TB drives acordingly?
2. When those drives (6TB or 4TB) connect with my Mac, how many drives are viewable to be mounted on my desktop?
3. Suppose i want to divide the 6TB solution to two drives (a 4TB and a 2TB drive) is it possible to be able to use one of the two as a TimeMachine drive and the other for storing purposes?
4. Will there be any possible issues if i do the setup described on 3?
5. Are there any suggestions for different brands but same specs?

 

[pagansoul]

I have a Drobo 5 bay (3TB each), 2 WD 3TB and 1 WS 2TB drives attached via the usb. My 4th USB is attached to a 7USB port. I don't currently own anything that uses the Firewire ports and my monitor uses HDMI. I can see all my HDs on the desktop and actually have my iTunes directed to one of these drives. You can tell your machine if you want to view the HDs. Yes, you can split your drives by formating them any way you want.

Look on upper right hand of monitor.

 

[paulrbeers]

Suppose i purchase a WD MyBookStudio II edition...
1. Is the 6TBdrive solution, a combination of 2x3TB drives and the 4TB solution, a combination of 2x2TB drives acordingly?
2. When those drives (6TB or 4TB) connect with my Mac, how many drives are viewable to be mounted on my desktop?
3. Suppose i want to divide the 6TB solution to two drives (a 4TB and a 2TB drive) is it possible to be able to use one of the two as a TimeMachine drive and the other for storing purposes?
4. Will there be any possible issues if i do the setup described on 3?
5. Are there any suggestions for different brands but same specs?

If you specifically want help with the WD MybookStudio II, it usually helps to include that in the title..... The chances of someone stumbling into a thread called "storage purchase!!!" with knowledge of a specific product is quiet limited. However, someone who owns one and sees a thread titled something like "WD MyBookStudio II or other options" might be more inclined to pop in and answer questions....

just sayin'

 

[zoran]

If you specifically want help with the WD MybookStudio II, it usually helps to include that in the title..... The chances of someone stumbling into a thread called "storage purchase!!!" with knowledge of a specific product is quiet limited. However, someone who owns one and sees a thread titled something like "WD MyBookStudio II or other options" might be more inclined to pop in and answer questions....

just sayin'

Perfectly correct and helpful, thanx, im changing the title right away!

 

[whiteonline]

When you plug it into your Mac, the drive appears as one single drive. You must use the Drive Manager software to configure it to be either RAID0 or RAID1.

So, for example, if you want the full capacity of 4TB or 6TB, you would configure the drive as RAID0. After, you can partition the drive with Disk Utility.

Just understand that RAID0 is striping (alternating writing between the two disks). If you one disk fails, all data is lost.
RAID1 is mirroring (redundancy).

 

[zoran]

So, for example, if you want the full capacity of 4TB or 6TB, you would configure the drive as RAID0. After, you can partition the drive with Disk Utility.

So after setting it as R0 i can partition it to be 2 drives of 1+3TB right?

Just understand that RAID0 is striping (alternating writing between the two disks). If you one disk fails, all data is lost.

So having this said, its better to have one 4TB drive rather than two drives forming one via the RAID solution. Right?

 

[whiteonline]

So after setting it as R0 i can partition it to be 2 drives of 1+3TB right?

Yes. You can partition however you like - 1 + 3 is fine.

So having this said, its better to have one 4TB drive rather than two drives forming one via the RAID solution. Right?

I think either is fine (RAID0 should be faster if the actual disk drives are similar between the RAID and single). Statistically, RAID0 is more fault prone - but it's always possible that the single drive will have a manufacturing defect.

If redundancy is not your goal (RAID1), go by whichever is the best deal. The WD StudioII is a bit long in the tooth, (Firewire, USB2). You may be able to find a 4TB USB3 drive for the same or less.

 

[Chancha]

We have over a dozen of the WD My Book Studio II firewire of various capacity in the studio;

1) They are all dual HDD enclosures with identical drives inside, using hardware RAID controller, and cannot be configured as JBOD in OS X. You must use the WD software to control the RAID setup and monitoring. In other words, like the above replies say, OS X will always see it as a single logical volume, and if you want to use full the capacity your only choice is to set it up in RAID0 stripping mode, which in my opinion is the worst thing you can do with your Time Machine backup, as it increases HDD failure rate to double.

2) The earlier versions of OS X 10.9, together with the WD software is widely reported to be a death trap that can go as bad as losing all your data! If you have even a slight chance of plugging this into a 10.9 running Mac, I strongly suggest you to read more about it, just google WD 10.9 data loss. In fact the MyBook Studio 2 is the biggest candidate or failures looking from the reports

3) You can avoid WD branded drives, or 10.9 altogether for now. Our studio made the mistake of getting so many WD RAIDs in the past before they were frankly very affordable, but you get what you pay for. My advice is to use LaCie, if you don't want to spend time to research more on this.

 

[zoran]

The WD StudioII is a bit long in the tooth, (Firewire, USB2). You may be able to find a 4TB USB3 drive for the same or less.

USB3 or TBold are not options because im using a Mid 2010 iMac that only has a FW800 port. So im only looking for FW800 drives!

We have over a dozen of the WD My Book Studio II firewire of various capacity in the studio;

What kind of studio are you talking about?

My advice is to use LaCie, if you don't want to spend time to research more on this.

What Lacie drives would you recommend?



What are my options for a bay that has the looks to match the iMac? Im looking to find something to host drives for backup (with Timemachine) and for storage.