Western Digital My Book 3.0 2TB review

The Western Digital My Book 3.0 may have a huge capacity of 2TB and a fast USB3 interface, but it doesn’t look very different from the company’s other external desktop hard disks. The slender, curvy design is vaguely reminiscent of a book’s spine (hence the name) and is designed to be positioned vertically as well as horizontally without any fiddly stands. Although this external hard drive has plenty of cooling vents, it doesn’t have a fan and relies on passive cooling instead so you’ll want to keep it in a well-ventilated area.

Although the My Book was beaten by other USB3 disks in some of our file transfer tests, its file copying performance is still impressively quick overall. Large files were written at 92.5MB/s and were read at just under 130MB/s. Small files were written at 63.6MB/s and read at a chart-topping 86.6MB/s.

If your PC doesn’t have USB3, Western Digital also offers the My Book 3.0 with a USB3 PCI Express adapter card for an extra £15 which is an inexpensive and convenient way to upgrade to USB3. Otherwise there aren’t any other extras included – not even the SmartWare backup program or the always-on display found on other Western Digital external hard disks, which is a little odd.

Another oddity is that the My Book 3.0 has a micro USB3 connector designed for portable disks, rather than the larger, full-size USB3 connector. This isn’t a problem since the appropriate cable is included in the box and is easily replaceable if lost or damaged, but it’s unusual nonetheless.

The Western Digital My Book 3.0 may not be blessed with extras, but this is easily overlooked given its huge capacity, low cost per gigabyte of 7p and fast performance. If you simply want lots of storage and don’t care about performance, then a cheaper USB2 disk would be a better choice. If performance is your priority, the My Book 3.0 is a great external desktop hard disk.