MyBook Mirror

It is strangely satisfying, to have a new harddisk. Actually, to be precise, I just got a new pair of external harddisks. I grabbed the Western Digital MyBook Mirror Edition. That unit is basically a pair of 1tb internal harddisks in an external enclosure, set to either RAID 1 or 0. Yes. That's 1 terabyte, or rather a pair of 1tb harddisks mirrored, to become a single 1tb backup unit. I recall having a 340mb harddisk not too long ago, so I think while 1tb looks huge now, it'll look quite puny in the years to come.

The primary purpose of an external unit is both to replace the harddisk that recently went bad, and to serve as a comparatively rarely accessed backup unit. To serve that purpose, it has to be quite steady. So when I spotted this RAID-ready external unit going at a good price, I was intrigued. While RAID 1 has a danger of faithfully reproducing errors across both harddisks, its perfect mirroring also means that if harddisk A dies, B will be able to take up the slack without killing off any of my stuff. That means my research and photos will be quite safe for now.

The darned thing's a brick, though it's delightfully black has an endearing blue light that matches the LEDs on my casing. Nothing much to say about it, except it's significantly slower than a pair of harddisks fitted internally. In fact, the ironic thing is that these two harddisks and the casing actually cost me less than purchasing two individual 1tb harddisks. Perhaps I will eventually figure that I'd pluck them out of the casing and fit them in my desktop. But for now, I do want external storage, so these will have to do.