Review of Western Digital's MyBook External Hard Drive Series

For some folks, a paltry 80GB of space isn't enough. Enter the Western Digital MyBook series, several massive drives built to hold anything you can put on them. Whether you're in the market for a data backup drive or an expansion to your current ability to store tons of data, the Western Digital Mybook drives are very worthy of a recommendation.

The MyBook stores up to a terabyte of information (or significantly less if you choose an older model), and depending on the options, comes with a host of other features that are sure to prove valuable to any home or work office.

Different Editions
I tried out the simple Western Digital MyBook Essential edition, but it's worth pointing out that Western Digital offers three other drives in case you really need Firewire 400 or 800, or if you'd like to get some automatic backup software with the whole package (every edition other than the Essential includes this). The full list of differences is available at Western Digital's website, and I appreciate that they've got different levels available for different consumers; for instance, I've got my own backup software and I don't need Firewire, so the Essential's perfect for me. My mother, on the other hand, needs automatic backup software and she has a Mac, and she would like to save files to the drive from several computers in her home, so I bought her the Studio edition, which neatly supports all of these features.

Setup was a breeze and the included cords are sturdy and well built. I didn't have any problems getting the drive to be recognized (in this age, I didn't expect to have any problems, of course) and in a few minutes I'd moved some large movies onto the drive and was watching them play. Somewhat predictably, there was no dip in performance and nothing to complain about.