Western Digital My Book

If you're addicted to downloading videos and snapping up every game you can find online, chances are you need inexpensive, voluminous storage (like DROBO B800I ) to house it all. The 8TB version of the Western Digital My Book ($249.99) can hold thousands of hours of video, or millions of MP3s or photos. It's backward-compatible with current and older Macs and Windows PCs, a plus right now as USB standards are changing. With a good mix of capacity, pricing, and performance, it's a shoo-in as our latest Editors' Choice for desktop external hard drives.

Conservative Looks

The My Book$184.99 at Amazon shares its vertical orientation with older WD drives like the 2012 iteration of the My Book DuoBest Price at Amazon, though its scalloped black polycarbonate sides are more like those on the recently redesigned My Passport$119.00 at Amazon drives. It measures 6.7 by 1.9 by 5.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 2.02 pounds. That's compact, but still made 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.

The extra 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 made for the heavy downloader as well as the gamer who wants to put an external drive on their Xbox One$272.95 at Amazon, or later this year, their Sony PS4$339.96 at Amazon. With some of the larger console game downloads now approaching 40GB, an 8TB drive should be able to handle at least 200 games before filling up. But many games take up much less space (between 500MB and 10GB), so you will likely be able to install many more.

Affordable Storage

At its $249.99 list price, the 8TB My Book is much less expensive than the same-capacity Seagate Innov8$349.99 at Tiger Direct. That translates to 3 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$200.00 at Amazon (both 4 cents), the latter our former top pick.

The My Book has a single USB 3.0 interface and it is formatted exFAT out of the box, so it will 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$2,998.95 at Amazon and the Promise Pegasus2 R2+$659.00 at Amazon, but those drives are specialized for media content creation, and are priced much higher. The My Book comes with a three-year warranty, longer than the two years you get with the Seagate Backup Plus.

Everyday Performance

I tested the My Book on both a Mac and a Windows PC. On the Windows-based PCMark 7 secondary disk test, it earned a decent score of 2,000 points. To put that into perspective, the Seagate Innov8 was only 115 points ahead (2,115) using its USB-C interface. Smaller portable drives were much slower; the Toshiba Canvio Connect IIBest Price at Amazon scored 1,450. Dragging and dropping our 1.2GB test folder took 7 seconds, while the same test took 2 seconds on the Innov8.

The My Book was also a bit slower than the Innov8 on the Mac-based Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: 177MBps read and 176MBps write versus 185MBps read and 181MBps write. By comparison, the dual-drive-equipped Promise Pegasus2 R2+ was much faster than either, at 332MBps write and 374MBps read. The takeaway is that the My Book is speedy enough for backup purposes and local file transfers, but more specialized drives like the R2+ are better for use as work drives for art projects.

Highly Recommended

Most of us need a large repository for our data files, including the tens of thousands or millions of pictures we'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 choice, with enough capacity to last you for several years. It's more versatile than the Innov8, the only other mainstream 8TB drive we've tested. And it's a better deal than the Seagate Backup 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.