The PC in the typical home is becoming the hub for all our media – music, photos and videos, so it pays to have as much backup storage has possible. The My Book range is about at attractive as current external hard drives get.

Huge capacity; plenty of options

Quite expensive

Good price good product

The My Book Studio Edition is a welcome addition to the My Book family, and should find a home on many Mac and PC users' desks.

Capacity indicator isn't accurate; Not the fastest eSATA drive

No fans; Little heat; Huge capacity; Attractive design; Five year warranty; Fully featured Mac software

Aimed at the Mac user, the Western Digital My Book Studio (4TB) ($259.99 list) is a metal-clad external hard drive. Its matte silver chassis matches the aluminum case of your new iMac, Mac mini, or MacBook Pro, and its USB 3.0 connection means that it's speedy for new Macs, while remaining...

No visual capacity indicator; No Thunderbolt.

If you think bigger is better when it comes to storage space, you might be interested in Western Digital's My Book Studio Edition II , which combines two 3TB drives in a RAID 0 setup for a whopping 6TB of data storage.

Sleek design; Lots of storage space; 5-year limited warranty

Unimpressive write speeds

The My Book Studio is Western Digital's Mac-focused range. Unlike its single drive cousin , it's not encased in metal, but rather silver spray-painted plastic. The Studio Edition II is rather sensibly named, in that it contains two hard drives, sorting it out for a maximum capacity of 6TB.

User serviceable drives; Great sequential FireWire 800 performance; RAID 1 or 0 available

Not great on the random speeds; we've seen better eSATA performance; Lid is a pain to close

Its price may be daunting, but Western Digital's My Book Studio Edition II offers a massive 4TB of desktop storage, speedy transfers over eSATA and FireWire 800, and user-replaceable drives.

Massive storage space; User-replaceable drives; ESATA and FireWire 800 ports offer speedy transfers for Mac or PC

Pricey; but not unreasonable considering capacity; No eSATA cable included

The Western Digital My Book Studio Edition allows you to easily stow away precious digital memories without breaking the bank.

Western Digital's My Book Studio caters primarily to Mac users, but it can be used on PCs, too. It's a versatile drive, which can be plugged into any computer thanks to the inclusion of four different types of interface connections.

Has eSATA, USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 interface connections; if using USB or FireWire, the drive switches off automatically when the computer is shut down

An eSATA cable is not supplied; the backup software is only a trial version; the drive's enclosure is made out of plastic

Aimed at the Mac user, the Western Digital My Book Studio (4TB) ($259.99 list) is a metal-clad external hard drive. Its matte silver chassis matches the aluminum case of your new iMac, Mac mini, or MacBook Pro, and its USB 3.0 connection means that it's speedy for new Macs, while remaining...