Time to Upgrade Your PC’s Hard Drive?

New Yorkers know that living space can sometimes seem confining. With all the audio, video, and photo downloading you’ve been doing, could your computer’s hard drive be struggling to find space? A full hard drive can impair your overall PC performance and speed.

Western Digital introduces the MyBook Essential. It’s an external hard drive designed for your desktop PC or Macintosh computer that provides up to 500GB of storage. That translates to up to 142,000 digital photos, up to 125,000 MP3 songs, up to 200 hours DVD quality video, or up to 60 hours of HD video.

The MyBook appears as if it’s about the size of a small paperback book so you can place it neatly and aesthetically on your desk. It’s about 6-3/4 inches high by 5-1/2 inches wide x 2-1/4 inches deep. It takes up less space on your desk, stacks horizontally, and allows two or more drives to stand neatly together like volumes on a shelf so it is both utilitarian and stylish. It’s fast and quiet at 7200 RPM with a large 16MB buffer. It connects externally to one of your computer’s available USB 2.0 ports. With its intelligent management system, the drive can automatically turn on and off along with your computer. MyBook resists shock and has a special heat dissipating system to keep your drive running cool.

Installation is a snap because you don’t really “install” this drive, you just plug it in and it’s ready to use. There is no CD to install; the included software loads from the drive the first time you plug it in. It also includes a USB connecting cable and an AC power cord.

For greater convenience, it comes with Google software on the drive to make it easy for you to locate files with Google Desktop, manage your photos with Picasa and simplify web searching with the Google Toolbar. Sure this software is free off the web but it’s a nice touch that it’s there ready for you to use right away.

The web is expanding its libraries of digital audio, video and more ready for you to download. Why continue to struggle with a smaller hard drive? MyBook is just like adding a large, new closet in your apartment.

This entry was posted by Dr. Iz on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 10:07 am