My Book

Western Digital's My Book is a desktop external hard drive that connects to a PC or Mac via FireWire, USB, or eSATA. Multiple versions of the drive available; some including bundled backup software. Current capacities range across several available models from 160 GB to 2 TB.

Each of the drives are designed to stand upright on a desktop (like a book in a bookcase) or lay flat, and additionally the drives power up/down automatically when the computer powers up and down; though the drive is powered by a separate AC adapter (included with the package) and not through the USB cable. Both single and dual-drive My Books are available; the latter capable of RAID 1 mirroring.

Other features of the drive include a front panel LED to indicate drive activity, and, in all but the Essential and Mac versions of the drive, an LED indicator that shows the drive's current used/free capacity. The Office Edition of the drive includes MioNet DriveAccess software, enabling you to access the drive remotely (provided the computer the drive is attached to is turned on; compatible with Windows only). Automatic backup features are included on all but the Essential and Mac versions of the drive; and "GreenPower" features are also touted, including IntelliPower, which the vendor describes as a tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate, and cache size; IntelliPark, which automatically unloads the heads during idle; and IntelliSeek, which calculates optimum seek speeds depending on the physical location of the target data on the disk.

The My Book is offered in several flavors: Essential, Mac (new), Mirror, Home, Office, Studio, and Studio II; the Mirror and Studio versions are dual drive configurations (capable of RAID 0 or 1) while all others are single drives with capacity ranging up to 1 TB (2 TB in the dual drive editions). All sport USB 2.0 interfaces, with the Home Edition including FireWire 400 and eSATA ports, and the Studio Editions including FireWire 400/800 and eSATA ports. The Mac and Studio Editions of the drives are all pre-formatted for use with Mac computers.

Visit the Western Digital Web site for further information.