There has been a few posts about My Book external hard drives being slow but nowhere I can find solutions or even proper technical info. It doesn’t look like WD reps/techs check these forums so we are left to just troubleshoot amongst ourselves.
Here’s background info about my system setup:
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MacBook Pro
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Processor: 2.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
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Memory: 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
I am a professional photographer and I bought My Book Studio Edition II (RAID 1 config) hoping to archive my large library of digital images (DNG, RAW, JPEG, Lightroom catalogs). Unfortunately this hard drive is extremely slow. Just as example I transferred 126 MB from my CompactFlash memory card to the laptop’s internal hard drive via USB 2.0 and it took about 5 seconds to complete. Same files transferred from internal hard drive to My Book Studio took over 2 minutes. Then to compare outgoing speed I have also transferred those files back to memory card and it completed in 12 seconds.
Here’s full data I was able to collect in my testing (exact same files 126 MB):
CF card (Sandisk Extreme III) → MacBook Pro internal hard drive … 5 seconds
MacBook Pro internal hard drive → CF card (Sandisk Extreme III) … 12 seconds
MacBook Pro internal hard drive → My Book Studio Edition II (FireWire 800) … 136 seconds
My Book Studio Edition II (FireWire 800) → MacBook Pro internal hard drive … 13 seconds
MacBook Pro internal hard drive → My Passport Studio (USB 2.0 & FireWire 800) … under 5 seconds
My Passport Studio (USB 2.0 & FireWire 800) → MacBook Pro internal hard drive … under 5 seconds
I have also started testing this drive with USB 2.0 but I’ve stopped after 40 seconds. It obviously isn’t the problem with cables or ports because I have tested them with other external drives. I have installed latest firmware and WD Macintosh +TURBO drivers. No noticeable improvement.
There’s one other alarming problem. My Book Studio is setup to work in RAID 1, but while transferring about 4 GB of files, WD Drive Manager changed status of the drive to RAID 0. After transfer completed it returned to say RAID 1 again. Could be a sign of a failing hard drive but why status info for drive A and B states that both are good.
I hope that above info is detailed enough for one of WD tech support guys to respond and provide a solution for all of us.
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UPDATE:
Please read through. It might not work for everyone.
Accessing the drive became almost impossible. It was taking forever to just browse through folders. I have pulled out one of the drives. With only one drive still inside the enclosure, I have connected it to the computer. After RAID failure error message I was able to access the drive and it was fast and responsive. That gave me enough time to transfer all my archived images to a new external drive.
After all files were safe I have decided to do some more testing to see if the problem is the hard drive or RAID connection. I have swapped the drive and I was able to access it but when I tried again later it stopped mounting and was invisible to the computer. I guess it’s dead now.
Sending to WD for replacement/repair.