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Western Digital's new My Book Pro Edition II external hard drive features a RAID mirror setup and 1 Terabyte of storage space.

With a small resemblance to a real book, the Western Digital My Book Edition II features RAID 1 technology and a whopping 1 terabyte of storage space. The small catch is that users can specify whether they want the drive to be configured in a RAID setup. If they do, then that 1 TB of storage space slides down to 500GB since the two internal drives are mirroring each other. This will of course provide more security for your information. If you choose not to keep the drives in a RAID 1 setup, then you get full access to the 1TB of storage space, and the two drives stay in the RAID 0 setup by default, and thus provide faster transfer rates.

Western Digital is targeting the small-office and related environments who need a vast array of personal storage space, as well as the general consumer who is looking to store their movies, videos and other programs. The Western Digital My Book Edition II features FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces, and would be great for video editing if you are able to take advantage of the FireWire 800 connection.

The drive ships with EMC Retrospect Express version 7.5 backup software (you likely would need to pay for the full version) and system recovery software. MSRP of the Western Digital My Book Edition II is set at $549 and comes with a 3-year warranty. The drive is available now from Western Digital's website.