Western Digital Announces New My Book Studio External Hard Drives
Western Digital today announced that its newest generation of the popular My Book Studio external hard drives are designed for use with Mac computers and Apple Time Machine. Now available with a 3 TB storage capacity, the new design features a brushed aluminum casing to match the appearance of a Mac computer, and also serves to keep the drive cool while in use. The aluminum exterior, combined with its WD Caviar Green drives, eliminates the need for an internal fan to reduce drive noise and extend the life of the drive. Although formatted for Mac computers, the My Book Studio external hard drives can also be reformatted for PCs.
The My Book Studio external hard drive includes all the features and benefits that have made it one of the favorites among creative professionals and Mac computer enthusiasts, including its fast and flexible FireWire 800/400 and USB 2.0 interfaces, user-controlled automatic backup software and drive management, password protection and hardware encryption. Shipping in capacities of 1 TB, 2 TB and 3 TB, the My Book Studio drive includes the WD Caviar Green series of internal hard drives with WD GreenPower Technology.
"WD has updated the design of its My Book Studio drive while providing natural cooling features delivered by the new aluminum enclosure," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD's branded products and consumer electronics groups. "The drive will maintain all the features that are important to the creative community, including high speed FireWire 800 and adding large capacities up to 3 TB."
Today, CDRLabs brings you an in depth look at OCZ's Agility 3 SSD. This cost-effective alternative to the popular Vertex 3 is based on the same SandForce SF-2281 controller and shares many of the same features including a SATA 6Gb/s interface and TRIM support. Despite its use of more affordable asynchronous NAND, the 120GB Agility 3 is capable of delivering up to 525 MB/s sequential read and 500 MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 50,000 4KB random write IOPS.

CDRLabs has taken an in depth look at Transcend's new USB 3.0 portable hard drive, the StoreJet 25H3P. Available in 500GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities, the drive is capable of reading and writing at speeds as high as 90 MB/s. The StoreJet 25H3P also features a sophisticated three-stage shock protection system that meets the U.S. military's drop-test standards. Along with an anti-slip rubber enclosure, this system incorporates a reinforced hard casing that evenly distributes the force of an impact, and an internal hard drive suspension damper as a last line of defense.