Western Digital MyBook Studio Edition

The MyBook Studio Edition is designed principally with the Mac market in mind, as evidenced by its silver design and the Mac-focused instructions that accompany it. But it works perfectly well with a PC, and it stands out from the crowd this month as a classy performer.

The MyBook may look dumpy next to the monolithic LaCie or the low-profile Freecom, but its chunky shape means it's easy to stand it upright, and some thought has clearly gone into dispelling any impression of boxiness. Different corners are rounded in different ways, which gives it a pleasingly asymmetrical profile, and the narrow LED strip at the front glows to indicate it's powered. In use, it strobes back and forth like the bonnet light on KITT.

Round the back, there's a standard mini-USB connector, plus eSATA and - another indicator of the MyBook's Apple heritage - two nine-pin FireWire 800 ports. There's a cable provided to connect these to a six-pin FireWire 400 socket (the type most commonly found on PCs and notebooks) but, annoyingly, there's no eSATA cable provided. There's a power button, too, but when we tried it we found the drive immediately woke up again. We had to physically detach the USB cable to get the unit to properly power down.

While the MyBook Studio exudes confidence, it does fall down in one area - it's the most expensive desktop drive on test, in terms of both unit price and price per gigabyte. It isn't a close race, either: Iomega offers the same capacity for nearly £40 less. You could save a little by opting for the slightly cheaper MyBook Home Edition (it's black and lacks FireWire 800, which PC users won't miss) but you're paying that money for a solid build and no small amount of style.

At the end of the day, the MyBook is a huge drive with eSATA support that'll look stunning on your desk. If you think that's worth paying for, you won't be disappointed.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith