Anyone who uses external hard drives regularly wishes they were faster. Once you start copying several gigabytes of data to an external hard drive, you’re in for a long wait. Most external hard drives connect to computers via USB 2.0, but USB 3.0 is ten times faster. While your computer probably doesn’t have a USB 3.0 port, Western Digital’s My Book 3.0 comes with a solution.
Western Digital’s My Book 3.0 is an external hard drive with a USB 3.0 interface that allows data transfers at
speeds up to roughly 5Gbps. Of course, USB 3.0 is backward-compatible with USB 2.0, so you can easily use My Book 3.0 with older computers. Naturally, data will transfer at USB 2.0 speed when a USB 3.0 device is connected to a USB 2.0 interface. With 2TB of storage, you’ll have plenty of space for all your photos, music and video files and probably have room left over for files you’ll collect in the future.
Because most people don’t have computers with USB 3.0 ports yet, Western Digital is bundling a 2-port USB 3.0 PCIe card with the drive. You need a desktop computer because notebooks don’t have PCIe expansion slots, but the card and drive are compatible with Windows XP,
The Western Digital My Book 3.0 comes with a USB 3.0 cable, AC adapter, software CD, quick install guide and the 2-Port PCIe adapter card. The drive has a sleek design that measures 5.3 x 1.9 x 6.5 inches and it weighs 2.6 pounds.
Whatever you do with an external hard drive, you can do it faster with USB 3.0. And you don’t have to pay much of a premium for USB 3.0 connectivity. My Book 3.0 costs about $225 for 2TB of storage and a USB 3.0 PCIe card. That works out to roughly $100 per TB of storage and $25 for the USB 3.0 card. And $100 per TB is only slightly more than what you would have to pay for an external drive with a USB 2.0 interface.
5 Comments
Nothing but Western Digital for me after having 6 1TB drives all crash n a 2 week period. It all contained video projects that I keep on file for customers for up to 5 years in the even they want to purchase additional copies they can. I lost a lot of future sales over the failed Maxtor drives. Go with these bad boy WD's and you won't be disappointed.
Like the horizontal drives much better (WD makes them too). A vertical is at too much risk to fall, especially if you have pets or kids around or are just plain clumsy like me.
Don't let them tell you that you can't use a laptop,they make a card for laptops too,just plug it in.I too don't care for Maxtor,nothing but trouble.Western Digital has worked very well for me.B&H gets high marks from me also.
Until the Seagate / Maxtor 1 TB nighmare drives, I thought the same thing. Bought on two seperate occasions, Maxtor 1 TB external drives, both crashed; bought a Seagate internal 1TB drive .... it lasted 2 weeks. They admit that they shoved the technology out the door too quickly knowing there was a possibility of mass failures. The volume of calls to customer service shut down their whole phone system. There are many nasty product reviews. It was a gamble and they lost.
I run only WD now as the reviews are so much better. I haven't had any problems to date which is very refreshing.
It sounds nice, but at the risk of getting into a debate similar to Canon v. Nikon, I have always used and stood by Maxtor (now Seagate) hard drives, I've never owned a WD. Not that I would not trust it, just think I will wait for the equivalent Seagate version.