It looks like Seagate is finally getting some competition for the HDD capacity crown. Western Digital has announced that it's now shipping 3TB hard-drives, as well as a range of new high-capacity 2.5in models supporting USB 3.0.
Unfortunately, the company is following Seagate's lead in more ways than one. Rather than launch a standalone drive, the new capacity will only be available as a part of the My Book Essential family of external storage. Thankfully, though, these drives will ship with SuperSpeed USB 3.0, allowing you to fill up all of that space at 5Gbps. Obviously it'll be backward compatible with USB 2.0 as well.
In addition, the manufacturer is shipping the drives - which are also available in 1TB and 2TB capacities - with its SmartWare automatic backup software. The easy to use program will help keep PCs automatically backed-up to the external drive should anything ever go wrong.
For those that prefer their storage to be slightly more portable, Western Digital is also launching the My Passport Essential and Essential SE. The drives will come in 500GB (for the former), 750GB or 1TB (for the latter) capacities and a range of different colours. These models will also get the benefit of USB 3.0, so filling them in a hurry should be no problem.
All of the new drives are available now directly from the manufacturer in the US, with global availability expected soon. The 3TB My Book Essential will retail for $250 (£195 inc VAT), while the My Passport Essential and Essential SE drives will cost between $100 and $170 (£78 to £133 inc VAT).
