back to article WD adds e-ink screens to external HDDs

Western Digital has added displays to the members of its My Book external hard drive range, allowing you to see how much storage you have left – even when the power’s switched off. WD_My_Book_Elite_01 Western Digital's My Book HDDs have e-ink displays The PC-compatible My Book Elite and Mac-compatible My Book Studio drives …

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  1. Haku

    Ch-LCD

    Ch-LCD was developed many years ago which only needs power when changing from dark to clear or clear to dark - we could have had such external HD cases which permanently display the capacity years ago if they'd used that, or perhaps they do, simply saying "e-ink" could mean anything.

  2. SmallYellowFuzzyDuck, how pweety!
    Thumb Down

    More interested in the USB and Firewire ports

    Don't supposed they even have it on this model but can someone please design an external HDD that works as a USB hub!

    These drives usually have their own power supply so they could also function as a USB 2 hub.

    It would be really useful as I tuck my external HDD away behind my computer and I could plug all my other crap into it that I don't unplug at all, such as my printer and free up my USB ports on the computer.

    As for this display, nah I would never look at it, did I mention, I tuck my external HDD behind my computer where I can't see it...

  3. Cliff

    More for less?

    Unless I'm going stupid, that's $150 for more interfaces than the $170 model?

    (It's not unlikely that I'm going stupid, but eh?)

  4. Goat Jam
    Headmaster

    e-ink

    I believe that "e-ink" is a patented and trademarked product that is licensed to manufacturers by its inventor, therefore if it is described as an "e-ink display" you can be pretty sure that it will in fact be an actual "e-ink display", otherwise WD should probably be assembling a phalanx of lawyers as we speak to deal with the inevitable legal assault.

  5. Jonathan Mills
    FAIL

    eSATA?

    given that there is no USB3 (yet), why have they ditched eSATA from these drives? does anyone really have enough time in the world to copy TBs of data via USB?

  6. Daniel Wilkie

    @Cliff

    Ah, but the $150 model will be the 500GB, whereas the $170 reduced interface one will be 1TB ;)

  7. Parax
    Thumb Up

    why no Esata

    No ESata version seems daft.

    like the idea of an offline display though.

    This would be more useful on space limited USB drives..

    (my bet is we see it in 2 months!)

  8. bluesxman

    RE: More for less?

    "Both come in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB models, but Studio buyers also have the option of a 500GB model."

    IE the one with more connectivity comes with a lower capacity option, hence the lower starting price.

  9. Deebster

    Strange it's taken this long...

    I had a Lexar usb stick with an e-ink capacity status display years ago

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Do they work correctly?

    Western Digital's self-branded external drives seem prone to weird behavior. Western Digital says they're not bootable, and a quick dance through Google for terms like "MyBook" and "LUN 0" suggest that Western Digital may have done something rather odd putting these things together.

    For example: http://forums.bombich.com/viewtopic.php?p=44639#44639

    As the user "baltwo" says there, "What they're really saying is we've got our little controller set up as LUN 0 so we can run our crappy button board and safe removal tools, instead of directing LUN 0 directly to the internal HD. That's also why they can't disable their disk sleep feature."

    Do these new drives suffer the same problems? If so, thumbs down.

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