Western Digital announced Monday that it has added eSATA to its line of MyBook external hard drives. For those not in the know, eSATA is an external version of the serial ATA (SATA) hard-drive connection found within most modern PCs. It's fast: 300 megabytes per second -- much faster than USB 2.0, which has a standard transfer rate of about 60 Mbytes/s.

WD, is, in fact, one of the last storage makers to include SATA, as smaller companies like LaCie (as well as storage giants like Seagate) have begun offering it. Ironically, not all motherboard and PC makers offer it, though, so either make sure that your PC has an eSATA port built in or add an external PCI-to-SATA card yourself. The worst-case scenario is simply to buy a USB-based version; USB drives are fast enough to stream video.

The drive now includes "Safe Shutdown," a feature that attempts to mke sure that data is saved before shutting down, which it does automatically when the PC is turned off. The My Book Premium ES is now available at select retail stores and online retailers at an estimated price of $179 for the 320-GB capacity.

Post by Mark Hachman