What could be more unimpressive in today's IT world than a hard-disk, either internal or external? Still, this doesn't mean that producers can't try new designs and solutions to step out from the crowd.

Western Digital has also tried such a solution and it doesn't look too bad. The new external hard disks are part of the My Book series and as you might have guessed, they have a design that imitates books. In this way, you can have hundreds of the gigabytes on your shelf, without even looking suspicious.

The My Book hard-disks come in two editions, Premium and Essential, and have capacities ranging from 160 to 500 GB. The major difference between the two is that the Premium edition also has FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 ports and comes with backup software, while Essential only had a USB 2.0 connector and no software.

Another difference, this time related to design, is that Essential has a green power button, and Premium has a red one.

All My Book hard-disks have rotation speeds of 7,200rpm and 16MB buffers. According to Western Digital, the average latency is 4.2ms, the read seek time is 8.9ms, and the track-to-track seek time is 2.0 ms.

The specifications also say that for Firewire, you can obtain transfer rates of up to 400Mbit/s, and that USB 2.0 goes up to 480Mbit/sec.

The bottom line is that if you want to blend technology and technology and you're willing to pay between $150 and $350 for the Premium edition and between $150 and $330 for the Essential, MyBook is the right choice for you.

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