Hardware Geeks

Three weeks ago WD sent me their brand spanking new My Book Elite to check out and I have to say it’s a pretty sweet external HDD.

For those who haven’t done so check out my unboxing video, so you can see for yourself how elegant the drive is.  WD for some time has had in my opinion some of the best looking external drives. This is the first black one I have had and I am happy its black as it matches the rest of my peripherals. I like to match.

There are two new things with the new My Book Elite, one is that it’s the first External Hard Drive with digital paper (that I am aware of). The Digital paper will display any label you put on the drive and how much storage you have remaining even if the device has no power. The second is the WD SMartWare software which is 100 times better than their previous software.

The My Book Elite itself is a pretty amazing drive, it works on both PC’s and Macs (you just have to format it accordingly) and it has a super fast transfer rate. Just to give you an idea of how fast the transfer rate is. I literally transferred 4 GB of photos and 2 GB of documents from my computer’s hard drive to the My Book Elite in less than 10 minutes. Pretty freaking fast if you ask me. However on my mac it was a bit faster and I guess we have to credit the WD speed boost software that you are prompted to install when it’s connected to a Mac. It shaved off about a minute or two.

What I like the most about the My Book Elite is the Digital Paper Label. Which is basically the same paper used on the Amazon Kindle and other eBook readers. The label pretty much has a little meter that shows you how much storage you are using and how much you have left. It You can even make the label read whatever you want. For example if you want to use it on a specific computer only, you can make it “PC1” or if you just want pictures on it “Pictures” and what’s so cool about it is even if there is no power to the drive the label will always display whatever info it displayed prior to losing power.

Can you imagine having a bunch of these, and storing them away, and coming back and just knowing which one you need because they are labeled.

Changing what the label reads, you simple edit the information in the WD SmartWare software, which I have to say is probably the easiest software that I have to say is the easiest software to use that has come with any other External HDD I have ever used.

With the new and improved WD SmartWare software, you can easily backup, and retrieve your back up. The entire process is painless. It pretty much does everything on its own once you install the software. I was amazed at how easy they made it. It basically mirrors your document folders.

But the WD SmartAware Software is not only available on the My Book Elite, it’s also available on the new PassPort Elite portable hard drives. I have also been playing with one for nearly three weeks now and it’s as stylish as the My Book Elite and just as fast. The only difference is the Passports are tiny compared to the MY Book Elite but you pretty much get the same functionality.

Oh and the Passport Elites are durable. I dropped mines out of a 4th floor window (don’t ask how it happened it was a mistake) and it survived with just some scratches and scuff marks.

Overall the My Book Elite external storage and backup solution that is available in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB. The Passport Elite is available in 320 GB, 500 GB and 640 GB and will make a great stocking stuffer.

For more information visit http://westerndigital.com

Post Tags: review  wd  my book elite 

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