Specifications, Availability and Pricing

Western Digital makes several different My Book products. Today we are looking at the Mirror Edition which uses only the USB 2.0 interface. USB 2.0 is a protocol that is starting to show its age and only has a peak bandwidth limit of 480 Mbits/s. Details on USB 3.0 are slowly starting to immerge this week at the Intel Developers Forum, but actual products will not be ready until the first half of 2009.

The My Book Mirror Edition is a little larger than most portable USB hard drives, but it is not built for portability as much as it is extra storage. At just under seven inches tall and four inches wide you could easily take the Mirror Edition in your luggage for travel, but your notebook bag is another story.

The biggest feature for the Mirror Edition is data protection in RAID 1. As enthusiasts, many of us have lost a hard drive in the past along with the data kept on the drive. As I type this I am searching my network for my wife's resume that I am pretty sure was lost in a disaster earlier in the year. Such losses are far more than troublesome and the aftermath is similar to what victims go through in a house fire. While I didn't lose any silicone or plasma bits in my data disaster, many years of files, pictures and other sentimental items were lost that can never be replaced.

Not listed in the product specifications is the software package Western Digital has included with the My Book Mirror Edition. WD Anywhere Backup, Memeo AutoSync and WD MioNet include everything you need to safely backup your data. You can also set the software to automatically back up certain folders or your entire system.

Western Digital has a good network of e-tail and retail outlets for their products and you can find many of the My Book products locally. After a quick search using the Tweaktown Shopping Network, I was able to find the 2TB version that we are reviewing today for 399 and the 1TB version for 219 U.S. Dollars. If purchasing locally, be ready to spend around 499 before taxes.