I’m considering buying the My Book Studio Edition II drive. I tried a My Book Studio on an XP machine but it did not work out. I want to be careful before buying another drive. I will be getting a Windows 7 machine and will be installing a Firewire 800 card which I would use for the Edition II. Is anyone aware of any issues with using the Firewire 800 interface with this drive? Is anyone aware of any issues with the Edition II and Windows 7 power settings? I would want to use power settings in windows 7 and I would not want to have to disable them in order to have the Edition II function properly. I assume the drive can be partitioned regardless if it is set as RAID 0 or RAID 1 but if this is not correct, let me know. If I want to change the drive from default RAID 0 to RAID 1, does it make any difference if I do this before or after formatting the drive for Windows and partitioning it? Any other considerations or concerns about using the My Book Studio Edition II drive on a Windows 7 machine would be appreciated. I know it’s a lot of questions but any help would be great. Thanks.
Let me tell you the problems we are having with the My Book Studio Edition II 4TB with Windows 7, arrgh, where do I start? We started out with my husbands’s new Dell Studio XPS 435T, two internal hard drives configured to RAID 1. We hooked up the My Book Studio Edition II to my husband’s PC and formatted it to RAID 1 also (you know if course, that they’re configured for MAC so you have to reformat in order to use with Windows). We then hooked the My Book to my old PC and copied all sorts of data - via firewire connection - on to it so that we could restore the data back on to my new computer coming from Dell. My new PC arrived (also a Dell XPS 435T) and then we hooked up the My Book through the eSATA connection and fired up the new PC. Our world came crashing down. Windows would not boot up and could not repair itself. We then tried to do restores and couldn’t get those to work either - we assumed we would have to reformat the drives on the brand new PC (even Dell had informed us that we were at this point with no alternative). We later determined that Dell had us erroneously boot up in Safe Mode with Networking instead of trying Safe Mode without networking and we were able to safely put the new PC back to a previous restore point. We then hooked the My Book back up to the new PC but through firewire connection and viola - Windows 7 booted up just fine and we could see all of the data we’d copied from the old PC. HOWEVER…Next, we made a recovery file using Dell DataSafe Local Backup software program and when we had the recovery file installed on to the My Book, suddenly, it seemed to competely wipe out ALL of the data on the My Book - we could no longer see the My Book drive or any of its data, although Device manager showed that the My Book was still connected. Next, we decided to give up on the entire RAID idea as we were told by a family member that his theory was that we screwed up the My Book when attempting to connect an external RAID configured system of drives to an internal RAID configured system of drives. After many hours of calls to Dell, we discovered that it’s quite simple to disable the RAID array on the internal hard drives of the Dell Studio XPS PCs by simply entering the BIOS by using CNTL + I during bootup. We thought this would be end to our nightmare. So, once the internal RAID array was disabled, we reconnected the My Book via eSATA connection, but ran in to the same problems when booting up the Dell XPS PC - Windows crashed and could not repair itself! We then disconnected the eSATA connection and booted up the PC and thankfully, the PC booted up successfully just fine. Next we reconnected the My Book via firewire connection and at least we could see the My Book, but the data was ALL gone. So, now, what we’re trying to do is reformat the My Book to see if it will allow us to disable the RAID configuration and therefore have access to all four of the drives within the My Book and see if Windows 7 will boot up successfully with the My Book hooked up via eSATA once it’s no longer confitured in a RAID array. Our fears are that either the reformat won’t remove the RAID array or the RAID array will be removed but Windows will still crash when we reboot the PC. One other solution we’ve decided to try if all else fails is to change the My Book to RAID 0 and see if Windows 7 will boot up OK on the Dell computer. If not, we’re going to attempt to return the My Book and abandon the external hard drive option all together and go with a Windows Home Server solution.
Don’t use the esata connector when booting up your computer, it will prevent your computer from booting windows.
If you want to use esata connector, simply boot up your computer first than connect the esata cable to your computer. You don’t need to have it connected when you boot up. esata, USB, firewire are all hot plugable, that is you can unplug it or plug it when your computer is on.
Or if you really want it to be connected when you power on your computer, make sure you turn on My book first (power button at the back) and wait 15-30sec before you turn on your computer.
RAID shouldn’t have affected this. Anyway, i hope it works.
If need more help feel free to contact me
Shen
