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

Not a bad drive but niggles let it down

Multiple connections; light; nice finish; easy to use

Annoying light; poor power button; only vertical

Purchased this unit for use as a fourth external backup unit using the Firewire connector. The Best Buy techie said that it was pre-formatted as NTFS. On connecting, using disk management utility, received message that disk was not initialized. Initialized and formatted partition.

Good connection options

Unusable when connected with a PC

I have owned several WD Mybooks over the years and I use them for video projects. They have been very useful and simple to move between machines for capturing and editing and have performed well. However, this new model comes with a "vitual CD". Basi...

There is a fault with the controller card not the drive itself, once used the drive is erased and no chance of recovery of any data as the partition is deleted. [...]Not worth buying if you value your data.

None

Faulty; You Lose Your Data; Once Used No Drive

This summer WD revamped their My Book Studio line of desktop external hard drives. The new My Book Studios feature an all metal aluminum enclosure and an increased capacity 3TB Caviar Green hard drive inside.

Great looking brushed metal case; Strong performance from FireWire 800; Quiet; passively cooled; design

No eSATA for PC users

Why is it essential? File sizes are always increasing, requiring even more disk space. Filling up your computer hard drive can cause problems; Photoshop may slow down and it can even decrease the performance of your processor.

Western Digital MY Book Studio 2TB Ext Drive For Mac, Metal Enclosure, FW800 WDBC3G0020HAL-AESN

The MyBook Studio doesn't have a display showing free space, either, and we're disappointed WD hasn't catered for the latest generation of laptops with Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 ports. Equally disappointing is the lack of a dedicated on/off switch.