Like Burger King, Western Digital believes in whoppers; it's just announced a 4TB capacity My Book external drive.

Inside this My Book Studio Edition II is a pair of 2TB SATA drives with four interfaces to a host PC: eSATA and FireWire 800 for maximum performance, with FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 for more pedestrian and wide-ranging connectivity. The drives use WD's GreenPower technology to make them eco-friendly and are configured in a RAID 0 configuration, which stripes data across both drives.

The product uses a convection cooling design and has a power-saving mode. It's designed to not need a fan, and to therefore run more quietly than other external drives, as well as draw less electricity.

The product is formatted for Mac computers and compatible with Apple's Time Machine backup utility. With the RAID 0 feature, WD says the product is good and fast for creative professionals, workgroups, small offices and anyone else looking for fast data transfer. A WD spokesperson suggested photographers, graphic artists, videographers, and home video enthusiasts with video editing applications as likely customers.

WD says it comes with automatic and continuous backup software, and is user-serviceable, meaning that owners can open the enclosure and replace failed or old drives. There is a capacity gauge to show at a glance how much space is available in the system, and a five-year limited warranty.

La Cie has a 4TB external drive, the Ethernet-connected 2big network model with a 10TB big brother. The 4-slot Drobo can store 8TB using 2TB drives, and with firmware support for 16TB.

The WD product is available now with an MSRP for a 4TB version of $649.99 (£429.99 in the UK). The LaCie 2big is $319.99. The 4-slot Drobo is $499 without any drives. ®

Related stories

• WD toughens portable, desktop HDD security (11 September 2009)
• Caviar Black gets 2TB model (1 September 2009)
• WD speeds up 2TB rollout (10 August 2009)
• Hitachi GST joins 2TB Club (6 August 2009)
• Recession ending for Western Digital (29 July 2009)
• WD unfurls 1TB Scorpio (27 July 2009)
• Dot Hill hops the 2TB train (7 July 2009)
• Hitachi GST buys Malaysian platter plant (3 July 2009)
• SuperSpeed USB PCs to ship by year-end (1 July 2009)
• HP shows off Simple home backup (26 June 2009)
• WD tera-fies home storage buyers (25 June 2009)
• Western Digital intros own-brand SSDs (16 June 2009)
• LaCie introduces telly-friendly external hard drive kit (5 June 2009)
• LaCie's xbig products get bigger (13 May 2009)
• Drobo doubles up storage robot capacity (7 April 2009)
• WD releases 2TB external HDDs (26 March 2009)
• Western Digital flashes home backup and media server (19 February 2009)
• Review Western Digital My Book World Edition 1TB NAS box (18 February 2009)
• La Cie's quiet fans (12 December 2008)
• Drobo 'data robot' revamped with Firewire (8 July 2008)
• Drobo storage 'robot' to deliver music, movies to UPnP devices (7 July 2008)
• WD RAIDs up My Book external hard drive (19 June 2008)
• Drobo storage box gets NAS add-on (14 January 2008)
• Western Digital drive is DRM-crippled for your safety (7 December 2007)