Digital Trends

Larger Image | More Images

Western Digital's latest spin on the My Book line of external drives uses data redundancy to ensure your files stay safe, even when things go wrong.

With Western Digital’s recent entries into the fashion segment of portable hard drives, you might expect a product dubbed the Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition to be a trendy book-shaped drive with a finish you can shave in. Sadly for this writer’s imagination, it’s not. The “mirror” in the new My Book represents the twice redundant way it stores your data, to save your most important files from mishaps.

The piano-black MyBook uses a standard RAID  1 configuration to write data twice – once to each drive within. If one drive fails, the other drive has every scrap of data preserved for future use without so much as a hiccup in retrieval. The enclosure is even user serviceable, making it possible to replace the faulty drive in such a situation.

Since this method of storage doubles the space needed for every file, users can also switch the My Book to a striped RAID 0 configuration, which will write data only once, but across both drives simultaneously, effectively doubling capacity. Other features include a green power-supply that WD claims lets the My Book use one third less power than traditional dual-drive setups, and a capacity gauge to let users know how much room they have left at a glance.

The My Book Mirror Edition is available immediately from both Western Digital’s online store and retailers. The 1TB version sells for $289.99, while the enormous 2TB version goes for $549.99.

Check out our Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition review.