Western Digital rolls out 2TB My Book external hard drives

Just in case 1.5TB wasn't enough for you, Western Digital's now gone and topped off its entire range of dual-drive My Book external hard drives with a full 2TB of storage. That includes the My Book World Edition II, the My Book Pro Edition II, and My Book Premium Edition II models, each of which appear to be otherwise unchanged from their previous incarnations. Of course, all that storage excess doesn't exactly come cheap, with the 2TB versions of the drives running between $749 and $799 depending on the model.

[Rahul @ Jul 24th 2007 5:21PM]

ok so you need 2tb for wat again.......... i mean come on

[paloooz @ Jul 24th 2007 5:24PM]

Porno.

[dextro @ Jul 24th 2007 5:36PM]

I'm guessing Porn... :P

Or, on a more serious side, raw video footage maybe.

[Maestro @ Jul 24th 2007 5:36PM]

LOL...When I had my Amiga and got a hard drive, people asked you need XX MB for what? (mind you, that was MB, not GB or TB...)

[Ricky @ Jul 24th 2007 6:55PM]

I agree with above, when I got my 500MB HDD(which was huge at the time) windows rolled in with a new version that took up 100MB and games started taking up 50 to 100MB as well. Then the CD with 650MB came along... you get the picture. People will always need increasing amounts of storage to keep up with the increasing demand for storage space!

[fraal @ Jul 24th 2007 7:41PM]

I'm going to pick up three of these. For what? Science!! C'mon guys, do you know how big scientific data sets (particularly satellite images) are getting these days?

[strider_mt2k @ Jul 24th 2007 11:09PM]

Porn?

[Rahul @ Jul 25th 2007 10:47PM]

ok ill give you that but if you notice not many people in the market are using 1tb+ just take a sec and think about it ok let me give you an example that i kno of the largest thing in my computer would be a game of 5gb other docs and stuff dont come close so 2tb is not something that is needed in this time like someone said above you should make the current harddrives cheaper bc we will still use them... ( i kno ppl that still have windows 98 and wont change or cant change $$ wise )
so 2tb just isnt something that a large group of people will buy (unless you need that much porno) which would just make you be the next inline for "How to catch a preditor" on DateLine...

[dale_nx26 @ Jul 24th 2007 5:38PM]

they should really focus on lowering the prices for current HDDs instead of creating new models of higher capacity HDD for more money. I want 160GB for $30, please.

[Chuckles McGee @ Jul 24th 2007 11:41PM]

At some point, the cost of the drives non-platter components (IDE connection, housing, motor, etc.) just doesn't make it cost effective. You can buy a 500 GB drive for $100, but you won't snag a 125 for $25...unless there's some crazy clearance sale.

[Carnaval13 @ Jul 24th 2007 5:44PM]

I love those drives! I already have a couple 1TB My Book and they are rock solid! $749 for 2TB, that's a good price per GB.

[grannia @ Jul 24th 2007 5:47PM]

The 1 TB version was *really* noisy and the firmware update to deal with this made it overheat (with blinking ring of death and a loss of data). Better avoid WD. Get VENUS T4U enclosure ($90) and four 500GB maxtors ($99 each in compusa this week), for a grand total of $486!!!! And the fan in VENUS T4U *works* and is quiet!

[paloooz @ Jul 24th 2007 6:07PM]

You're actually _promoting_ Maxtor?

[grannia @ Jul 24th 2007 6:11PM]

the drives in question say (on the side): "made by seagate" .... but the box says maxtor. I wish I had reasonable reliability data to guide my buing decisions... but I don't...

[LiQuiD_FuSioN @ Jul 25th 2007 12:36AM]

To be fair, Grannia's post doesn't deserve a Low Ranked score just because he's pointing out the flaws of the 1 TB model.

Like all early products, they will have their flaws. I am an owner of 4 WD products, and one is the early 160 GB model while the rest are 500 GB MyBooks. They all work great, but the problem is, I need a reliable 1 TB drive. And so far, by reading customer reviews, it certainly does have its flaws.

If WD's new 2 TB MyBooks get solid ratings, then I'm all for it and will eventually move all my data on a few of them. I'd like to save desk space as well, because I have 5 HDs in total here. The other HD is a Maxtor 300GB model, it gets hot, but it does the job.

[Cara @ Jul 24th 2007 5:53PM]

Western Digital has so many great hard drives! I won't use anything else!

[grannia @ Jul 24th 2007 5:58PM]

Just read the reviews of the 1TB version at amazon. WD sucks!

[Tavis Veighey @ Jul 24th 2007 6:33PM]

WD Makes good drives. I have 2 of their 500gig USB book drives. They work PERFECTLY!

[Richard @ Jul 24th 2007 5:54PM]

I too can't recommend going with these unless there is word they've changed the fan. It's the loudest thing ever, it sounds like a blow dryer and makes the 360 sound like a silent pc. And I wish I was exaggerating.

[Carnaval13 @ Jul 24th 2007 6:26PM]

The last drive I got was quiet. I upgraded the firmware for the first drive I had bought before and it fixed the noise.

[sylv3r @ Jul 24th 2007 6:59PM]

oh yes.. it's the only thing that keeps me from buying another one

[MEMEyou @ Jul 24th 2007 6:50PM]

I have a MyBook World Edition I, 1TB (in RAID1 config). I like the drive - but it's fans are quiet loud so I have it in another room. It requires no computer - just some good giga-lan. The code is hackable (source code on their site, too). You can enable ssh and use it to host web pages.

Mine is completely full of itunes stuff which is why i use the mirroring feature to help protect my investment - itunes handles it as it's default directory just fine (playing movies, music, etc.). The drives are user-serviceable and have the standard 3-year warrenty. Once the warrenty is up - i'll probably just replace the drives anyway (they'll be pretty cheap by then I suppose).

[Chris @ Jul 24th 2007 7:50PM]

Those are enclosures, not hard drives. Please don't mislead people with incorrect titles like this.

[kevnaca @ Jul 24th 2007 9:21PM]

What are you smokin'?! Don't you even know what external hard drives are? Seriously!

[Mr Angry @ Jul 24th 2007 9:32PM]

I have had the 1TB version of this, sadly it was returned.

It is noisy, the propriatry software is awful, and the World Edition touts connection via the web, without having the PC on. It's a great idea, but it is just not effective. Download speed are a lot slower than rival drives. They didn't even have Vista support.

I know negative stuff gets lowest ranked, but I hope a heads up will allow people to be aware going into an expensive purchase. I got mine from Best Buy and was able to return it after 30 days of struggling to get something that approached expected results from it. I was left disappointed, maybe my expectations were too high. Mt Angry was not angry this time, just a little let down :(

[Matt Bateman @ Jul 24th 2007 11:51PM]

I have the 500GB MyBook World Edition (The LAN based unit).

I've had it for a week, and it's been great. However, the software was horrible, and there is really no need to use it. Just connect it to your lan, and map the drive on your network. Stay away from the software - it slows down your transfer speeds, and you can't delete data from the drive without the software if you loaded it on with the software.

In conclusion, go for this drive, but DO NOT LOAD THE SOFTWARE.

[Monty @ Jul 27th 2007 9:31AM]

I have the 1TB my book world, and am mostly happy with it. The noise isn't an issue for me. The only thing that is an issue is the slow transfer speeds.
On my 100mbit network, I'm only able to obtain 2.4 megabytes/sec transfer rate tops! I should be able to hit at least 9 or 10 megabytes/sec. I think increasing the ram to something above 32mb would help. Why have a gigabit network interface if it can't even perform well at 100mbps? In terms of storage itself though, I have no problems with the device. I store alot of CD images and videos so I'd get a 2TB model if only to have plenty of room for big files

[Dan @ Aug 22nd 2007 8:17PM]

I also have bought the 1TB some time ago. Recently I needed a 1TB drive and was not satisfied with any other option out there. I decided to give the My Book 1TB drive another look. I found that "apparently" WD has fixed the noise issue, and to my pleasure my new 1TB is as quite as a mouse. So........... "so far so good".

[Kuratz Ebam-ti-sestra @ Oct 4th 2007 6:35AM]

Hello there,

I'am not sure what all these comments regarding the size are about, if you do not need 2TB why do you comment then??? 2TB will be just perfect for imaging, 3D modeling, and video editing, which when used intensively can't even get satisfied with this, and optional a lots of PORN. On top, if you are going to build up a RAID+1 with your 2TB you are going to end up with 1TB all in all! so I really think that this drive is an excellent product in terms of size and redundancy!

Regards,

[Bongo123 @ Apr 2nd 2008 4:06PM]

id use it easily

[Dr Jeckyl @ Jul 21st 2008 4:34PM]

I'm a professional photographer; on a regular basis I shoot events that span an entire week. Many times the entire event is cataloged and shooting in High Resolution RAW these days can take up quite a bit of space, on average my images are 16-17mb each before any digital manipulation. I’ll give you an example of an event I shot this past week; I took over 7,000 shots of which the client used 5,500 for galleries online. Each Jpeg is 6-7mb, and each RAW is 17mb that’s 168GB. So far this year alone I’ve shot several Terabytes of images, so why would anyone want more than a 2 TB drive….Photography and Video take up HUGE amounts of space and is only exponentially getting larger every year.

Personally I'd like to see prices drop so some 10 Terabyte drives will see the market, that and higher relaibility.

[foxboy @ Oct 17th 2008 4:34PM]

You might need big drive for:
I have over 1700 cd's that I own ripped to huge drive (s) for my personal music system. I use ITunes as a player and they are all ripped at full resolution AIFF files so they sound every bit (pun intended) as good as the originals. I use it daily, average 6 hours a day. I am at about 850GB. You also need backups, so I use two 1.5TB drives. These 2TB drives are not overkill for such use!