External storage solutions have lots of uses in today’s home. With the huge amounts of digital content the average consumer uses today, we need a place to back that data up. Western Digital has announced a new My Book Studio external hard drive that has an e-label display built-in.

The cool part about the display is that it can show the volume label and how much space is left on the drive even when the drive is not plugged in. The device is designed for Mac users and has FireWire 800 interface and 256-bit hardware encryption.

It took them awhile, but drive makers are finally getting hip to the fact that we would like to see how much disk space is left without having to plug it in. About time. Western Digital’s My Book Elite and My Book Studio drives now feature labels on the outside displaying that always-on info.

That means even when it isn’t plugged in, you’ll get a 12 character label, and a second line that displays how much space is left on the disc. In both gigabytes and a graph no less. Simple solution huh? The USB 2TB My Book Elite is $280, and the 2TB My Book Studio with FireWire 800 and USB connectivity is $300.

In storage news WD has updated several of its external HDD storage devices for the media lover in you. The new My Book Essential comes in 1TB for $149, 2TB for $229.99 and 500GB capacities for $99.99. The My Book for Mac is available with 1TB for $149.99.

While the My Passport Essential comes in capacities of 500GB for $139 or 320GB for $99.99. My Passport for Mac is available in 500GB for $149.99 and 320GB for $119.99.

Western Digital has scaled things down with their latest TV Mini. It’s a mini version of their earlier media sharing device. The first thing this set-top box does is get rid of HDMI output to cut down on the size to just 3.6″ square and 0.8″ deep.

It’s capable of 1080i video playback and has RealVideo format support alongside MPEG-1/2/4, VOB and XviD formats. As far as connectivity, you get component output for HDTV, RCA and optical audio out for digital sound. It can be tucked away just about anywhere.

Western Digital now has an upgrade to its 2TB My Book Studio Edition II. They’ve doubled the storage space and it also sports a new exterior design. In its RAID 0 configuration, you’ll find a couple of drive bays available to hold two 2TB hard drives for a total of 4TB of storage space.

It’s compatible with both PC and Mac platforms and the Western Digital 4TB My Book Studio Edition II has a variety of connectivity options including eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0. The external capacity gauge will give you important information with just a quick glance.

If you walk into a home or office where a computer is, present odds are you are going to find some sort of external storage solution. More often than not computer users resort to USB external hard drives to back up their data and to store files.

Western Digital has announced that its My Book line of external hard drives is now available with 2TB of storage in a single disk model. That means that big storage takes up less space on or under your desk. The new 2TB disk is available in the My Book Studio, Mac Edition, Home Edition, and Essential Edition models.

Western Digital has finally launched the industry’s first 2TB internal hard drive today in the US. It’s the highest capacity single HDD in the known universe, dubbed the 2TB Caviar Green. It’s available now for $299. The 3.5-inch platform drive includes 32MB of cache and is based on WD’s 500GB per platter technology with 400Gb/in2 areal density.

HotHardware had a sneak peek at the drive and has some benchmark results: The WD managed to hold its own against the Spinpoint F1 and Barracuda 7200.11.

Looks like Western Digital has entered the world of HD media streaming. The WD TV HD Media Player is said to “turn your USB drive into an HD media player, allowing you to watch your favorite HD movies on your TV.” So, basically it lets you plug in a USB hard drive and play multimedia clips up to 1080p on your HDTV via HDMI/composite outputs. Comes with a remote control and browsing software. The small 1.6- x 4.9- x 3.9-inch box is pretty portable and the $129.99 price doesn’t hurt too much.

When it comes to your notebook computer everything is a compromise. The performance of everything from the CPU inside to the hard drives and video cards are a compromise of performance for battery life and vice versa. The trick is to get a good balance of performance while still getting good battery life.

Western Digital announced today that its line of Scorpio Black 2.5-inch SATA notebook HDDs are now available. This line of drives gives high performance with a 7200 RPM rotational speed, but adds some technology to help reduce the battery power needed and increase the runtime of the notebook.

If you thought you had a big drive in a small package with Western Digital’s 250GB Passport you can think again. Hopefully you’ve come to expect it these days because soon after you get the biggest and the best something else will come along to out-do it.

WD has announced the launch of the latest in their line of the sleek, portable Passport drives with this one boasting a massive 320GB capacity of storage that is small enough to fit in your shirt pocket. The whole drive and enclosure weigh under a quarter of a pound does not require an external power source. The drive gets its power and transfers data through a single USB 2.0 connection and gives a 480 Mbps transfer speed (which will take you an hour and a half to fill the drive).

Western Digital is betting those seeking 2.5-inch, 9.5mm form factor hard drives (notebook computers, portable storage devices) want larger storage options for their data needs. To this end the company has just introduced the WD Scorpio 320GB hard drive, priced at around $200.

The WD Scorpio 320GB hard drive offers up a rather speed performance time of 3Gb/s transfer rate. It reportedly is also extremely quiet for a 5400 RPM drive of its type because of special WD seeking algorithms. You also get your typical shock guard protection and a secondary technology which “calculates optimum seek speeds to lower power consumption, noise and vibration.”

This week the news seems to be all about hard drive manufacturers pushing the limits and getting big results. Today Western Digital announced that it broke a record for hard drive density. They accomplished the milestone by using their own perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR)/tunneling magneto-resistive (TuMR) technology, and achieved 520 Gb/in2 areal density in a demonstration. Why is this important? Because, this is the highest density ever reached using continuous media. It produces a 3.5-inch hard drive that stores 640 GB per platter as well as single hard drive capacities as large as 3 TB. If you are doing the math, that’s more than double today’s max of 200 GB per square inch.

Following an earlier demonstration in California, they announced the news this week at the Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference in Tokyo. As usual you won’t be able to get one overnight.(Though that would be nice.) They estimate a release date sometime in 2010.

Western Digital has unveiled some new features and a new look to its line of external My Book hard drives. The Home Edition, Office Edition and Essential Edition 2.0 all offer up to 1TB of data storage along with a compact design and are smart enough to power themselves off when you computer shuts down.

Both the Home and Office editions have also traded in the light ring on the front for a straight bar that not only indicates power but gives you an estimate of available capacity at a glance. They also house a backup feature that will automatically back up anything that’s saved to it.

Western Digital announced today that they are expanded their My Book lineup of external storage devices to include larger capacities of 750GB and 1.5TB.

With all the multi-media content available in higher HD quality and at more reasonable prices, the desire for more storage increases as well. This external drive can be used for to keep HD movies, photos or just for backing up computers or data. The My Book line from Western Digital has a plug and play setup and the My Book World Edition has a feature that allows secure, remote sharing of the drive content directly through the internet, even when the computer is powered down.

The new 750GB and 1.5TB My Book external drives are available now and the whole lineup has suggested prices ranging from $279 up to $699 depending …