A new external hard drive from Western Digital now features an extremely fast eSATA port. But is it enough to rip USB storage a new one?
 Open this book: Void its warranty. |
Western Digital has recently announced that its external hard drive it calls the 'My Book Premium ES Edition' now features an eSATA port, the standard for extremely fast external storage.
According to Western Digital, "The eSATA interface on My Book Premium ES Edition can move data to and from a PC or Mac as fast as 300 megabytes (MB) per second," which shouldn't be taken at face value.
To give you an example, you're doing well if your internal hard drive peaks at 70MB/s. Sure, the eSATA interface can handle 300MB/s, but the hard drives themselves are yet to reach such a ridiculously high performance.
But it's all good -- basically, the hard drive within the 'Book will be as fast as if it were inside your computer. It uses a different plug, though, so put away that SATA cable.
If your computer doesn't yet feature the new eSATA interface, it also sports a slower USB 2.0 port. This is just in case you want to plug it into the majority of today's computers, which probably isn't entirely unlikely.
Intriguingly -- and what may come as a surprise -- the circular blue LED lights on the front of the unit are actually useful. Well, at least the smaller one.
Aside from adding to that apparently necessary Bling Factor, the inner of these two rings can tell you how much space is used on the drive, depending on how much of it is lit up -- a line starts at 12-o'clock and fills in the ring's circumference, clockwise.
Of course, you need to install drivers to make use of this one informative ring (to rule them all, perhaps), but it's certainly a useful and intuitive touch.
You can collect the 1.2KG 'Book in two sizes -- either 320GB or 500GB for $249 and $349 respectively.
Although I actually don't believe eSATA will take over portable USB storage, it will likely take over with mass external HDD storage. Primarily, this is because eSATA is damn fast but it requires a separate power source. On the other hand, USB is slower, yet it's capable of providing power for the more portable drives.
This means we have to deal with yet another interface, but eSATA devices such as this are just too hot to dismiss.