Vikram

I went through all this last month whilst researching what to buy!

The Western Digital website is all clever CSS and pretty pictures but the dumb schmucks don’t even list half the products they have for sale - neither are they easily found!

I was completely confused after looking at the amount of models available on Amazon etc then comparing to Western Digital website site - which doesn’t even have any mention of them!

WDC need to list the drives along with the Manufacturer serial numbers so you don’t get caught out by clever internet salesmen conning you with a cheaper version!

There is complete confusion in naming My Books versions all over Amazon!

Anyway the My Book essential secretly hardware encrypts your data whether you ask it to or not! This means if you attempt to rescue your data by taking it out of the Western Digital box to plug into a standard Sata lead - you are screwed!

Spend your money on the My Book 3.0 2TB WDBAAK0020HCH-EESN

It is not encrypted by default (most backup software gives you that option anyway)

My Book 3.0 comes with a top class WD hard drive - a Caviar Black 7,200 64mb cache Sata 6Gb/s and USB 3.0

Mybook essential comes with a ‘green’ slower hard drive which is why its cheaper!

2TB is also a good size choice - cos Windows XP is limited to 2TB hard drives if you ever retro-fit the drive as a Sata internal & still rely on solid, stable XP!

You don’t get software with My Book 3.0

Try Cobian (free) data backup or Macrium or Acronis 2011 (about £20 uk) I think they sorted most of the problems after the new release.