The Western Digital 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive is WD’s desktop external backup drive, and its 8TB capacity gives you room for years of unsorted photos and videos, plus project files. This unit connects via USB 3.0 and requires its own AC power, since it uses more power than a bus-powered portable drive. It includes hardware encryption using 256-bit AES, plus protection from a user-defined password. Included with this are two programs, one for backing up your computer and one for managing your drive, and WD also offers a three-year limited warranty.
Head over to Amazon to get the Western Digital 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive for just $298, down from its usual price of $400. That’s a $102 discount and 26% off.
A sizable external hard drive to hold all your extra files and documents
With eight terabytes of capacity, you’ll have plenty of room to store data long-term. For example, you could store a decade of RAW photo files, a complete 4K movie library, or ten years’ worth of Time Machine backups, and there’s still plenty of room left.
Hardware encryption protects your data with 256-bit AES. In addition, you must enter an encrypted password before anyone can access the data, and you create that password using the WD Security application. After creating a password, anyone trying to access the data on the hard drive will get nothing unless they enter the correct one. Since the hard drive uses hardware-based encryption, even if someone stole it, they would still need your password to read or write data on it.
Scheduled backups occur via WD Backup. You select which items to back up and how often, then WD Backup manages the rest. If you also want a cloud-based, off-site backup, WD Backup can do this by automatically transferring selected data to Dropbox. WD Drive Utilities completes the picture. You can run diagnostic tests, register your drive, and securely erase any data you wish to remove from the hard drive when you no longer require it.
In terms of form factor, the My Book is designed to sit upright on a desk. The unit’s overall design is very low profile, allowing placement next to monitors. When delivered, the My Book comes preformatted for Microsoft Windows with NTFS. Reformatting for Apple’s macOS takes about two minutes via Disk Utility. After formatting, you can use WD Backup for Windows or Time Machine for macOS to start backing up your important files.
Buying the Western Digital 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive for $298 instead of $400 gets you the drive, a USB 3.0 cable, and the AC adapter. The My Book series also offers larger capacities, up to 44TB. These larger-capacity models are ideal for those who need more storage space than this model provides.