Review: Western Digital My Book Essential drive

The Western Digital (WD) My Book Essential boasts some high-performance functions, but is a little on the expensive side for what you get.

The My Book external hard drive comes in a solid plastic casing, with sheer black finishes, giving it a stylish appearance. The drive sits comfortably on its side or upright, and at roughly the size of a hardcover book, storing it is pretty easy.

Weighing just over 1kg, the WD hard drive is somewhat heavy. Then again, it does give data hoarders 1TB of storage space.

The My Book drive is easy to use, simply plug in and you're ready to transfer and back up files.

WD has also thrown in its SmartWear software, allowing users to easily back up their drives. In fact, the drive allows users to easily back up their PCs or laptops whenever changes are made to stored files - pretty nifty. According to WD, this is because automatic backup software can continuously work in the background whenever users add or change a file.

The drive's password protection feature ensures that users' data is safe, making the drive an option for business use, too.

The My Book Essential lets users transfer data via USB 2.0, or the newer and faster USB 3.0 technology. WD has cleverly marketed its device, saying USB 3.0 transfers data at 10 times the speed of USB 2.0. Well, yes it does. However, the WD device does not.

This is because, even though it has USB 3.0 functionality, the drive is limited by its internal capabilities. Mechanical hard drives, like those in the My Book, can be expected to achieve transfer speeds of around 135Mbps, so the internal drive uses only around a fifth of the potential bandwidth offered by USB 3.0.

However, when I tested the drive, it ran at 80Mbps to 95Mbps. This is still really fast, and allows users to transfer an AVI two-hour movie in roughly eight seconds, three really high-quality MP3s in one second, or 240 RAW photos per minute. This is more than adequate for personal use. It should be sufficient for business use, too, unless users are transferring high-spec video files for editing.

Then again, it would be nice if the drive was 10 times faster than USB 2.0, which, shame on you WD, is what the packaging suggests.

The WD My Book Essential is a great, high-performing drive for consumers who make use of USB 3.0 technology, allowing for faster file transfers. While the drive's packaging suggests transfer speeds that are 10 times as fast as that of USB 2.0, it does not deliver this; but it is still pretty fast.

The drive is also easy to use and format, and comes with software that allows users to make continuous backups of files on their PCs or laptops.