Western Digital launch external hard disks with digital labels

Posted on 7 Oct 2009 at 17:49

Hard disk manufacturer Western Digital has launched several new external hard disks, all of which have small e-ink displays which can be used as a digital label.

External hard disks are increasingly similar, so Western Digital hopes to distinguish its latest range by including small e-ink displays. These can be used as a label to tell you what's on your disk.

E-ink screens use the same low-power, easy-to-read screen technology as Amazon's Kindle e-book reader. The display shows a single line of text and a capacity gauge. The text can be altered using the included WD SmartWare program.

The displays are available on the My Book Elite and My Book Studio desktop disks. Both ranges comprise 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB models. The Elite disks have USB2 ports, while the Studio disks also have FireWire 800 connectors. The 1TB Elite will cost around £100, while the 2TB Elite will cost around £200; the Studio versions will cost approximately £10-20 more.

We're not convinced that a small, one-line display is much better than a strip of masking tape or a post-it note to tell you what's on your hard disk, especially if the display can't be updated automatically. Nevertheless, we're puzzled why Western Digital's Passport line of portable disks won't get e-ink displays, especially as Verbatim is using a similar technology on its recently announced Insight portable disks.

We'll bring you our final verdict as soon as we get our hands on these new hard disks.

Author: Alan Lu

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