WD HDD... different levels?

I've been looking around at prices for a 500 GB WD external hard drive and I am getting a bit confused about the different levels that WD makes for its HDD's. There is a Essential, Home, Office, Studio, and World edition MyBooks. The studio edition is what they carry at my Apple store and on the website it says that the studio edition is formatted for Macs but i was under the impression I was able to use any external HDD. Can someone point me in the right direction here? Thanks everybody!

I got a WD MyBook 320gb for my windows pc and when i switched to mac, i plugged my MyBook into the mac and it worked with no problems.

bmxx,

I'm using a 320GB WD Passport for an external HDD. I like it because it's small, quiet and runs on the power the connecting USB Cable provides. I hooked it up to my Mac and it operated right out of the box. Got it at Newegg for $135 incl. S&H.

I also downloaded SuperDuper (free to use for backups, $27.95 for all the features such as scheduling) as my Mac backup program. As I recall, it formatted the drive and then did a backup, which by the way, is bootable.

You can use any HDD as an external, just format it as Mac OS Extended (Journal). You can do that with the Mac Disk utility.

Noel

Thanks. How would it work if i want to take my music collection off of my PC desktop and but it on my macbook? would i format it to the Mac and then plug it into the PC or what?

There are certain formats that will only work for PCs, Macs or both. Its been a while since I have dabbled in this stuff so I am not sure which ones are what. Someone on here definitely knows.

I do know if you want to format a drive it completely erases the data on the drive. So you would lose your music. hopefully its already formatted for both Mac and PC.

Studio Edition, like you said, are pre-formatted for Macs (HFS+). The others, with the exception of the World Edition, are similar, but formatted for Windows (NTFS). You should probably avoid the World Edition, which is for network storage.

All of them can be reformatted for use on a Mac. The differences in the names have to do with the kinds of connectors and minor features.

The Studio and World Editions are white, the Office is silver, the rest are black.

Here is a page that compares all of them: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/index.asp?cat=8

KB3GZW said:

There are certain formats that will only work for PCs, Macs or both. Its been a while since I have dabbled in this stuff so I am not sure which ones are what. Someone on here definitely knows.

I do know if you want to format a drive it completely erases the data on the drive. So you would lose your music. hopefully its already formatted for both Mac and PC.

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All the mybooks will work with both mac's and i'm pretty sure all are pc compatible too. Like lucion said, really the only difference is (other then some come in different capacities) are the connectors on the external casing.

wytwolf said:

All the mybooks will work with both mac's and i'm pretty sure all are pc compatible too. Like lucion said, really the only difference is (other then some come in different capacities) are the connectors on the external casing.

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In fact the Studio Edition won't work on a PC right out of the box, just by the way its formatted. What I meant by saying that certain ones will only work on Mac, PC, or both, is by how it is formatted. I actually have a MyBook Pro 500GB and it came formatted for both Mac and PC. I believe it came FAT32, I'm not sure. I also reformatted it for HFS+.

bmxxx said:

Thanks. How would it work if i want to take my music collection off of my PC desktop and but it on my macbook? would i format it to the Mac and then plug it into the PC or what?

Click to expand...

bmxxx,

If you have an external HDD formatted in FAT32, you should be able to read it with your Mac. You should give it a try and prove to yourself that it works.

If you start by formatting it to the Mac standard format, your PC won't read it.

If your PC and your Mac are co-located (in the same house) the easiest way is to set up your Mac's Airport wireless to talk to your PC and vice versa. Then you can transfer files all day long

Noel