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In English
SuomeksiSoftware
Out of the box there are a couple of things already on the disk. There's a SES driver, user manual in multiple languages, WD SmartWare for both PC and Mac and also a WD Quick Formatter if you just want to wipe the disk back to square one.
The backup software bundled with the Essential is even more limited than the one we saw in the World Edition review. Really you can only choose which types of files to back up from each partition. There are no options for adding individual folders, and no control over the backup schedule. The software starts instantly moving files as soon as they are created or change.
For added security the software also allows one to set a password for the drive. On the same view there's the model number and the firmware revision.
Performance
The theoretical top speed of the USB 3-connection is 5 Gbit/s, but ofcourse in real life that's never achieved. Even in practice it should still be the hard drive rather than the connection that limits the speed. To put this theory into test, we copied files of varying size to and from the My Book.
- Large files: 79 MB/s
- Small files: 32 MB/s
The large files test consisted of full HD videos, and in this test the drive achieved average transfer speed of 79 MB/s. The small file test was 100 GB of photos, or about 43 000 files. In this test the speed averaged at 32 MB/s. Clearly then it's the drive rather than the connection limiting the speeds. The 79 MB/s is about 2,5-times higher than what you could expect from a similar USB 2.0-drive, so overall the My Book offers great performance.
Conclusion
This review was our first look into the performance of the USB3, and what we found was very impressive. USB2.0 has really been killing the performance of the external storage, but the introduction of USB3 has brought the transfer rates back up to date. Sure, e-SATA has been offering good performance external storage, but it has just never matched the popularity and convenience of the USB. As a product the My Book Essential is a nice addition to Western Digital's product range and also makes good use of the new connection. The transfer speeds are nice, and the Green-series hard drive hiding inside the casing doesn't really make noticeable noise or heat. Really the only con that I can think of is the very limited backup software, but as the whole SmartWare program is just a free bundle, that doesn't really count as a large minus, either. |
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