Western Digital My Book - Review 2022

If you're addicted to downloading videos and snapping up every game you can observe online, chances are you need inexpensive, voluminous storage to house it all. The 8TB version of the Western Digital My Book ($249.99) can concord thousands of hours of video, or millions of MP3s or photos. It's backward-uniform with electric current and older Macs and Windows PCs, a plus right now every bit USB standards are changing. With a good mix of capacity, pricing, and functioning, it's a shoo-in equally our latest Editors' Choice for desktop external difficult drives.

Bourgeois Looks

The My Volume shares its vertical orientation with older WD drives like the 2022 iteration of the My Volume Duo, though its scalloped black polycarbonate sides are more like those on the recently redesigned My Passport drives. It measures 6.vii by 1.9 past 5.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 2.02 pounds. That's compact, but still fabricated to sit on your desktop rather than fit into your pocket. You'll need a spare power outlet, since the My Book needs its (included) power adapter to operate.

Western Digital My Book (8TB)

The actress bulk also helps the My Book accommodate the desktop drive mechanism inside, ranging from 3TB ($129.99) to the 8TB model we tested. This capacity is fabricated for the heavy downloader as well every bit the gamer who wants to put an external bulldoze on their Xbox I, or after this yr, their Sony PS4. With some of the larger console game downloads now budgeted 40GB, an 8TB drive should be able to handle at least 200 games before filling up. But many games take upwards much less infinite (between 500MB and 10GB), so you will likely be able to install many more.

Western Digital My Book (8TB)

Affordable Storage

At its $249.99 list price, the 8TB My Book is much less expensive than the same-capacity Seagate Innov8. That translates to three cents per gigabyte for the My Book, much less than most of the drives we've tested over the past couple of years, including the $349.99 Innov8 and the 5TB Seagate Backup Plus (both iv cents), the latter our former top option.

The My Book has a single USB 3.0 interface and it is formatted exFAT out of the box, then it will piece of work equally well with both macOS Sierra and Windows desktops and laptops. The interface is a bit slower than Thunderbolt 2, seen in the LaCie 5big Thunderbolt 2 and the Promise Pegasus2 R2+, only those drives are specialized for media content cosmos, and are priced much higher. The My Book comes with a three-twelvemonth warranty, longer than the two years you get with the Seagate Fill-in Plus.

Everyday Performance

I tested the My Book on both a Mac and a Windows PC. On the Windows-based PCMark 7 secondary deejay examination, it earned a decent score of ii,000 points. To put that into perspective, the Seagate Innov8 was only 115 points alee (2,115) using its USB-C interface. Smaller portable drives were much slower; the Toshiba Canvio Connect Two scored 1,450. Dragging and dropping our one.2GB test folder took 7 seconds, while the same test took 2 seconds on the Innov8.

The My Book was as well a scrap slower than the Innov8 on the Mac-based Blackmagic Deejay Speed Examination: 177MBps read and 176MBps write versus 185MBps read and 181MBps write. By comparison, the dual-drive-equipped Hope Pegasus2 R2+ was much faster than either, at 332MBps write and 374MBps read. The takeaway is that the My Volume is speedy enough for fill-in purposes and local file transfers, simply more specialized drives like the R2+ are better for use every bit work drives for fine art projects.

Highly Recommended

Most of us need a large repository for our information files, including the tens of thousands or millions of pictures nosotros've taken over the years, music files, and those downloaded movies we've been meaning to watch. In that regard, the 8TB Western Digital My Book is an excellent pick, with enough capacity to terminal yous for several years. It'southward more versatile than the Innov8, the only other mainstream 8TB bulldoze we've tested. And it'south a better bargain than the Seagate Fill-in Plus, thanks to a larger capacity mechanism, better value per gigabyte, and a longer warranty. We have no qualms naming the My Book our latest Editors' Choice for external desktop hard drives.