Skip to main content

Some Western Digital My Book drives shipping with discrete enterprise HDD inside

Along with Western Digital’s announcement of its new, helium-filled, Western Digital Red hard drives earlier this month, the storage manufacturer also debuted its new My Book portable drives. Since the My Book drive is of a similar capacity, it made sense that the Red drives would probably be used as part of them, but it turns out that at least some early release My Book drives came packing something else entirely.

When it received its My Book review unit, PCPer noticed that some My Book drives were already available in the shops. Not sure how that was possible, PCPer ran out to buy one to see just what was inside. If the WD Reds had only just been released too, what hard drive did Western Digital put in these early release My Books?

Recommended Videos

It turns out that the company opted for an enterprise-level drive from subsidiary Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST). The My Book line is not aimed at high-performance users, but the drive is particularly fast, able to output an average “transfer rate” in HD Tune Pro of 165MBps. Its burst rate even worked at 300MBps when connected up directly to a test system.

Related: Seagate is finally joining HGST in its helium-filled hard drive efforts

A bigger deal out of all of this though is the price. The new My Books are retailing at $250 but if you want to buy one of the HGST 8TB drives by itself, you would be looking at spending up to $500. So if you picked up a My Book recently you might have gotten yourself quite a deal.

However, this seems unlikely to last. It was probably only the case for a few of the early release models and in reality it seems likely that any newly produced My Books will ship with WD’s helium-filled Red drives instead. The HGST drives can’t be confirmed to be present in My Books from other retailers either, so don’t go out and buy a number of them hoping to make a quick profit.

It’s even possible that Western Digital will soon begin shipping My Books with a slowed down version of the Red too — essentially, nothing is guaranteed here.

But some people did likely get themselves quite a deal while it lasted.

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is a freelance evergreen writer and occasional section coordinator, covering how to guides, best-of lists, and…
The new Reachy Mini robot can let kids turn play into innovation
The Reachy Mini robot.

The Reachy Mini is an exciting new desktop robot aimed primarily at developers, educators, students, and enthusiasts, or basically anyone interested in creative coding.

There are actually two of them -- Reachy Mini Lite ($299) and Reachy Mini Wireless ($449) -- and both were developed by the prominent AI platform Hugging Face following its recent acquisition of Pollen Robotics. 

Read more
If you’re itching for an HP OMEN MAX gaming laptop, this deal will save you $500
The HP Omen Max gaming laptop with Valorant on the screen.

We've recently published a stunningly positive review of the HP OMEN Max 16. It's got a list of "Pros" a mile long. The single, obligatory con is "Thick and heavy." Considering that it's a gaming laptop, that's practically the equivalent of saying a flashlight is too bright to look at. Thick, and a bit heavy, just comes with the territory. All of this is to say that the review was great and we're fans of the HP OMEN Max 16. As a deal hunter it made me want to go and see if I could find a deal on the HP OMEN Max 16 and I did, sort of. Right now you can get a customizable HP OMEN Max 16t — a laptop that, if it didn't have a separate store page, I would think is identical to the one we reviewed — with a $500 discount, no matter what settings you choose. With the base settings of the laptop, that discount brings it from $2,100 to just $1,600, but you're free to upgrade to your heart's content. Tap the button below to start customizing to your whimsy or keep reading for some advice on how to do so and what to expect from the 16t.

Buy Now

Read more
Google’s AI agent ‘Big Sleep’ just stopped a cyberattack before it started
Sundar Pichai

Google's AI agent, dubbed Big Sleep, has achieved a cybersecurity milestone by detecting and blocking an imminent exploit in the wild—marking the first time an AI has proactively foiled a cyber threat. Developed by Google DeepMind and Project Zero, Big Sleep identified a critical vulnerability in SQLite (CVE-2025-6965), an open-source database engine, that was on the verge of being exploited by malicious actors, allowing Google to patch it before damage occurred. “We believe this is the first time an AI agent has been used to directly foil efforts to exploit a vulnerability in the wild,” the company said.

Why it matters: As cyberattacks surge—costing businesses trillions annually—this breakthrough shifts defense from reactive patching to AI-driven prediction and prevention. It gives security teams a powerful new tool to stay ahead of hackers, potentially saving devices and data worldwide. CEO Sundar Pichai called it "a first for an AI agent—definitely not the last" according to Live Mint.

Read more