Western Digital - My Book

For years now people have relied on external hard drives to store personal information, videos and other things. The size of external hard drives have been increasing recently and today we’re going to look at the largest external drive around.

Western Digital’s My Book is a sleek 1 TeraByte (1000 GB’s) external hard drive. Its curves seem a bit softer and there is a blue activity light. The old model had two circles: one for activity, and one circle that filled up as the drive was loaded with files. This new version has just a single LED strip that bounces back and forth during activity and then lights up as you fill the drive up.

Here are a few of the technical specifications for the WD My Book:

• Street Price: $349.99
• eSATA, Firewire 400, USB 2.0
• Automatic Backup software included
• Small size

It Holds

• Up to 285,000 digital photos
• Up to 250,000 songs (MP3)
• Up to 25,000 songs (uncompressed CD quality)
• Up to 76 hours of Digital Video (DV)
• Up to 400 hours of DVD quality video
• Up to 100 hours of HD video

Things I like
The fact that this drive allows for eSATA, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 connections. This means you’ll be able to use the fastest connection possible to move your data. This drive is meant to be a backup drive for your laptop or desktop. WD realized this and included a great set of software tools to do the backup job. This software works flawlessly and is really easy to use. I’ve had backup software where it would take me 30 minutes just to understand what to press but this isn’t the case. I also like the look of the My Book. It is so sleek and just looks really nice. The final thing I like about this hard drive is the fact that it stays cool even during prolonged usage. Normally external hard drives heat up but the My Book keeps cool.

Things I don’t like
The My Book is fairly expensive and there are a number of cheaper 1TB hard drives. Other than its high price there isn’t anything I don’t like about this drive.

Pros:

• Triple interface
• Great software
• Quiet operation

Cons:

• Pricey
• No eSATA cable included

Final Thoughts
If you’re in need of a large backup external hard drive the Western Digital My Book is definitely the hard drive for you. It looks amazing, has a number of different connection possibilities and stays cool even during prolonged use. I highly recommend this drive to any one.

Rating : 4.75/5

Western Digital Passport -250GB

External Hard disks are gaining popularity all over the world and many have started preferring them over pen drives to gain huge amount of portable storage space.The Western Digital Passport series of its external range of portable hard disks live up to that reputation and beyond.

Here are the specs:

• Serial Bus Transfer Rate (USB 2.0) : 480 Mbits/s (Max)
• Capacity: 250GB
• Dimensions: 129.78 X 79.78 X 15 mm
• Weight : 104 gms

The 250GB Passport Hard Disks just weighs a measly 104 gms and also has small dimensions making it a perfect pocket drive. It is a 2.5″ Hard disks and hence does not require any external power supply and is a bus-powered drive.This drive is known to have problems with older laptops like Apple G4 due to their limited bus-power but that is not the case with new laptops.

The packaging bundle is not anything to boast about as it does not even bundle a manual nor a carry case which are absolute necessities. But you can find the software manual on the hard disk.The outer surface is shiny glossy black but develops fingerprints and scratches easily.

Setting up the drive is a piece of cake as it is a plug-n-play drive and gets detected by Windows,OS X,Linux as it comes pre-formatted in FAT32 partition which is recognized by all the above mentioned operating systems.The formatted capacity of the drive is 232 GB.

Coming to the performance aspect of the drive.It is one of the fastest drives available in the USB 2.0 External hard disks category.It manages an impressive 20MB/s with FAT32 formatted and 22MB/s with NTFS formatted.The read speed is around 22MB/s. It may not be comparable to some of the external Firewire/eSATA hard disks available in the market but it does not need an AC adapter either!

Pros:

• Light Weight
• Small Dimensions
• USB Powered
• Fast Performance

Cons:

• Surface prone to fingerprints
• Surface gets scratched easily
• No manual bundled
• No carry case
• Pricey compared to 3.5″ external drives

Final Thoughts

I would recommend this drive to anyone looking for high storage on the move. Its price is 200$ which is not much as cost/per GB comes out pretty low. All in all it is a perfect pocket drive and a must buy!