Double Protection
External drive backups are all about securing the data on your PC. Nothing exemplifies this more than the Western Digital My Book. The Mirror Edition links two identical 3.5-inch 1-terabyte hard drives together to give you 1TB of RAID 1 (mirrored) storage (good for over 200 DVD movies or roughly two hundred thousand digital photos), which will be protected from the failure of a single hard drive.
The My Book Mirror Edition is a squat 6.75-by-4-by-6-inch (HWD) black box with ventilation holes punched into three of its sides. On the back you'll find the power button, a jack for the power adapter, and a mini USB port. In front is a vertical line of blue LEDs forming the activity/capacity indicator. The system is marketed as a 2TB drive because there are physically two drives, each 1TB, but you get that total capacity only if you go into the included WD RAID Manager and reset the drives to RAID 0.
The drive is a decent performer, especially considering that it copies everything twice. The My Book took 57 seconds to copy our standard 1.2GB test folder via Windows drag-and-drop and a pokey 3 hours 10 minutes via WD's Anywhere Backup utility. But that was just for the first backup; subsequent backups were almost instantaneous. Anywhere Backup isn't suited to full disaster-recovery backups. but the software will back up your data and media files.
The drive comes with WD Drive Manager, WD RAID Manager, and trial subscriptions to MioNet for online remote access and Memeo AutoSync for syncing folders between muItiple PCs. And with Gree n-Power drives, this unit is quiet and energy efficient. Any digital media enthusiast or business owner definitely needs one of these.—Joel Santo Domingo
PC Magazine January 2009
January 07, 2009
WESTERN DIGITAL MY BOOK MIRROR EDITION
September 06, 2008
Western Digital Velociraptor
Western Digital Velociraptor
Hard drive is incredibly fast, but has limited capacity
IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR the fastest desktop hard drive available-and don't mind a 300GB capacity and $299.99 price-you'll be very happy with Western Digital's 10,000rpm Velociraptor.
The Velociraptor is a 2.5-inch drive that comes with a special aluminium heat sink (called an IcePAK) that lets it fit inside a standard PC hard drive cage. The only drawback to this design is that the SATA connectors are in the middle of the unit, which prevents its use in external enclosures. The drive also does not support hot-swapping.
The Velociraptor ships with a STA II interface, which is capable of data transfer rates up to 3 gigabits (300 megabytes) per second. It also allows for a faster "burst" rate, speedily transferring cached data from its internal memory instead of from the physical platters. The package includes a 16MB cache, a single SATA II cable, and a 5-year warranty.
To test the drive's speed, we performed a basic 10GB read/write test, and we ran HD Tach 3.0 to check its seek time and sequential read performance. The Velociraptor displayed a super-fast seek time of 6.9ms-twice as fast as competing drives we've tested-and its HD Tach sequential read speed of 110MB/sec is almost double that of larger drives. It took only 2 minutes and 55 seconds to read and 3 minutes 10 seconds to write 10GB.
Better yet, the Velociraptor was largely inaudible throughout our testing, and it didn't feel warm to the touch, even after a few hours of fanless operation-J.N.
source: Computer Shopper September 2008.
www.westerndigital.com
May 24, 2008
Hard Drive Review: Western Digital WD7500AACS
Western Digital WD7500AACS
Newest "Green" Caviar SE16
"Green" hard drive campaign by Western Digital make them launch GP (GreenPower) series hard drives. One of the GP series hard drives is Western Digital WD7500AACS.
WD7500AACS have 750GB capacity. Its weight almost same as 3.5" 1TB desktop harddisk that use 4 discs although the WD7500AACS only use 3 discs. The harddisk is one of Cavier SE16 series with 16MB cache for fastest performance. GP protocol make the harddisk to be more efficient on power comsuming. It's about 4 to 5 watt less than conventional harddisk.
This WD 750GB is superior on burst speed that read rate. Although the seagate harddisk with same capacity is fastest, the WD7500AACS have advantes on power safer feature. Use this harddisk, save the world from global warming.
SPECIFICATION
WD7500ACS (CAVIAR SE16)
Interface: SATA II (3Gb/s)
Capacity: 750GB (3,5")
Buffer cache: 16MB
Seek time(avg): -
Rotation speed: -
MTBF: -
Weight (g): 716
www.westerndigital.com
Price: US$239
TEST RESULT
Random access: 14,ms
CPU utilization: 2%
Average read: 64,1 MB/sec
Burst speed: 224,1 MB/sec
Posts
