WD Crams Two 3 TB Drives into One My Book

WD's new My Book external drive features 6 TB and four ways to connect.

Thursday Western Digital announced a new addition to its My Book external drive lineup offering a whopping 6 TB of HDD storage. Labeled as the My Book Studio Edition II drive, this storage beast is aimed at creative pros of today and Mac enthusiasts who need to archive large HD video and photo files. It doesn't come cheap either, costing a meaty $549.99 USD.

"The My Book Studio Edition II drive now available with 6 TB of storage provides creative individuals with the expanded storage and bandwidth they need to effectively shoot, edit, and safely store their video productions without the need to compress their videos or reduce the overall quality of them for the sake of available space," said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD's branded products group.

The new 6 TB drive comes packed with two 3 TB hard drives mounted within the My Book enclosure. As seen in the image, users can easily access the HDDs should one need to be replaced. Interestingly enough, the drive also offers up four ways to interface with a Mac or PC including FireWire 800, FireWire 400, eSATA and USB 2.0 ports-- sorry, no USB 3.0 in this model.

According to WD, the external drive is formatted for Mac computers by default, but consumers can reformat the storage to work with Windows 7 and Vista (old-school XP can't handle the capacity). For energy-conscious consumers, WD said that the external drive uses approximately one-third less power than standard dual-drive external storage systems thanks to its WD GreenPower Technology. It's also quiet, designed with an efficient convection cooling system that doesn't require a fan.

As for other features, the drive provides automatic and continuous backup software, support for RAID configurations, compatibility with Apple Time Machine, and a built-in capacity gauge to see the available space at a glance.

My Book Studio Edition II dual-drive storage systems are available now at WD's online store (www.wdstore.com). MSRP for the My Book Studio Edition II 6 TB drive is $549.99 USD.