Western Digital Boosts External Storage: New My Book 4TB and My Book Thunderbolt Duo 8TB

Today, Western Digital announced an update to their My Book Thunderbolt Duo and their My Book line of external desktop hard drives. The new drives take advantage of recent updates to Western Digital's hard drive portfolio; specifically, their recent development of 4TB 3.5-inch hard drives.

The My Book line take a single drive, so it now supports up to a maximum of 4TB of spinning storage. The My Book Thunderbolt Duo line supports a second drive, meaning that you can now push up to a massive 8TB of storage through that speedy Thunderbolt port.

Users lucky enough to score a Thunderbolt port on their computers (which means all new Mac users, as well as upcoming purchasers of select PCs, like the new HP ENVY notebooks, or some Lenovo models) can set the My Book Thunderbolt Duo up in a RAID 0 configuration. That lets you stripe data across two drives, almost doubling the available throughput - or keep them in a safer, mirrored RAID 1 configuration, giving notebook and desktop users alike a safer  spot for their essential files, all without cracking a system open.

The new devices are available now at some stores in the United States, as well as on Western Digital's online shop. Expect to pony up for all that fat Thunderbolt-enabled storage - the new 8TB model comes in at a striking $849.99 (Thunderbolt tech ain't cheap, but unlike some, at least WD includes a Thunderbolt cable in the box!), while the new My Book 4TB external drive hits a much more palatable $249.99 price point - that's just three cents per gigabyte!