Western Digital My Book Pro - TechRadar UK

Unlike many a full-sized external hard drive, My Book's cute, book-like design makes it look perfectly at home on your book shelf. The specifications, on the face of it, are quite impressive as well, with a mammoth 500GB capacity and fast 7200RPM rotational speed.

Plus Western Digital has fitted no less than three interfaces to this 'Pro' version including FireWire 400 and 800, as well as USB 2.0. However, in practice, we have to say that the My Book Pro turned out to be a disappointment. While the drive features 'intelligent' power-up and switch off when you turn your PC on and off , it's not so clever that the drive instantly powers down if you accidentally touch the big button on the front panel, even if it's mid-copy.

Our test drive also sent an unpleasant and very noticeable vibration through the desk whenever it was working (despite its rubber feet) and, especially for small file transfer, it suffered from a very slow transfer rate indeed.