#WD MY BOOK ESSENTIAL 1TB BEST BUY SOFTWARE#

Western Digital includes some excellent utilities with its My Passport Essential external hard drive. That's good enough to beat out the LaCie Rikiki (36.6 MBps) and the Buffalo MiniStation (44.5 MBps), but it's still far below the Seagate GoFlex (71.1 MBps). When copying the same 5GB folder off the My Passport Essential, the drive fared a little better, taking 1 minute and 50 seconds, a rate of 46.5 MBps. The fastest drive, the Buffalo MiniStation Stealth, wrote the files at a rate of 64 MBps-23 seconds faster. It took the My Passport Essential 1 minute 43 seconds to transfer a 5GB folder of documents and media files, a rate of 49.7 MBps, the slowest of the 1TB drives we tested.

#WD MY BOOK ESSENTIAL 1TB BEST BUY SOFTWARE#

Unfortunately, all the software in the world can't make up for slow transfer speeds. Buffalo Technology includes more advanced software with its drive, but Western Digital comes in a close second. And, as a bonus, all the apps are bundled together so the software is easier to uninstall. There's even a way to check drive diagnostics and set a timer as low as 10 minutes for when the drive goes to sleep. Western Digital also includes encryption software to protect the drive and password-protect files.

You can quickly select whether to restore files to their original location or to a new folder. Restoring files was also just as easy using the Western Digital software. As the backup finishes documents or media files, you see a box that fills up. During backup, the software provides a visual indicator of the status by way of gauges.

Wd my book essential 1tb best buy