If you are in the market for an external hard drive as a backup solution, then you won’t go too wrong with offerings from Western Digital. This time round, the company has rolled out smaller and sleeker devices – the My Book Essential and the My Book for Mac external hard drives that will ensure all your data remains safe and sound thanks to the new WD SmartWare software and hardware-based encryption. These new devices are able to offer information concerning your data in a software control center, letting you sleep soundly at night knowing that your collection of photos, videos and files are properly protected. Regardless of whether you’re getting the new My Book Essential or My Book for Mac drive, either model will come in capacities ranging from 500 GB to 2 TB.

Using either model is a snap – all you need to do is hook it up via USB 2.0 and watch it go, where a first time plug in will result in the simple and intuitive first backup process which will run automatically. It comes with a real-time visual interface of the WD SmartWare software to let you see which files are heading off where for a more reassuring view, making it perfect for first timers. After the initial backup, all of a user’s files will be automatically backed up each time they modify or add a file. In addition, both the My Book Essential and My Book for Mac drives will also come with user-selected password protection that relies on military-grade 256-bit hardware encryption in order to make it harder for folks to access your data should the unfortunate event of losing or getting your My Book stolen. Nice to see Western Digital throw in a more upmarket feature in a reasonably priced device.

Both the new My Book Essential drives will come in 500GB, 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB capacities, retailing anywhere from $99.99 to $249.99.

Press Release