Performance wise, the WD My Book Essential is not excellent and there are faster external drives in the market. But where the WD drive scores is on the price per GB. At a mere Rs.3.93, its cost per GB is lower than the better performing ADATA Nobility NH03 at Rs. 4.6. So if huge capacity is what you are looking at the WD My Book Essential comes recommended.
Design and Build
It looks like any other My Book Essential drive with the bulky form factory. The glossy black plastic surface has a rounded finish in the front with an activity indicator. The top, read and lower portion are covered with ventilation vents to keep the drive cool while in operation. The rubber feet lift the drive off the ground so that air can enter from below to keep the drive from heating up. Power button is located on the rear side just above the USB 3.0 interface and has a decent feedback.
Test Setup:
Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K @3.4GHz
Motheboard: Intel DP67BG
RAM: 2x2GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 RAM @1333MHz (timing: 9-9-9-24)
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
OS Drive: Intel SSDSA2H080GIGN (80 GB SSD)
RAID 0 Combination: 2 x 300GB WD Velociraptor
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6850
Power Supply: Corsair HX620W
Performance:
The drive gives unformatted space of 2794.94GB. It gave a Read Burst speed of 160.4 MB/s which was slower than that of ADATA Nobility NH03 which gives 185.7 MB/s. In the real world testing which involved transferring 4GB sequential and assorted files from the WD drive to the RAID array and back we got the following scores. Read / Write (sequential file) in MB/s – 120.11 / 111.6 and Read / Write (Assorted) in MB/s – 102.01 / 65.32. This performance was much slower than the ADATA Nobility NH03. Infact, the Assorted Write test was found to be slower than its Passport drive as well. Intra-drive testing was at par with the ADATA drive.
Verdict
Performance wise, the WD My Book Essential is not excellent and there are faster external drives in the market. But where the WD drive scores is on the price per GB. At a mere Rs.3.93, its cost per GB is lower than the better performing ADATA Nobility NH03 at Rs. 4.6. So if huge capacity is what you are looking at the WD My Book Essential comes recommended.
Features: 3.5/5
Performance: 3/5
Build Quality: 3.5/5
Value: 4/5
Overall3.5/5
Price: Rs. 10,999