Western Digital MyBook Home Edition review

Gallery

Verdict:

Two fat ladies, a 500GB hard disk. Good price for a neat triple-interface drive.

Review Date: 16 May 2008

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Darien Graham-Smith

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

'Home Edition' often means a cut-down version, but the Western Digital MyBook has no shortage of features.

It's a neat little device, tough and chunky but still pleasing to look at. The corners are attractively rounded, and there's a cute Morse code pattern around the outside (we'll leave decoding it to those of you who remember the War). It's designed to stand upright, but you can happily lie it down if you prefer.

The access indicator at the front is particularly attractive: rather than settling for a single LED, like most manufacturers, WD have installed a row of lights that pulse and twinkle.

The on/off switch is just a button that tells the drive to power down - it doesn't actually cut the power. We realise this is intended to ensure you don't lose precious files by preventing the drive being turned off while data is being transferred, but we prefer a good honest switch.

As you'd expect, there's backup software included, in the shape of WD's own Anywhere Backup suite, plus a 30-day trial of Memeo AutoSync, which will help keep your files in sync if you cart them around between computers. Meanly, they haven't thrown in an eSATA cable, and speed-wise the MyBook was a little below average, but for £88 it's a likeable drive.

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