My Book is Western Digital's desktop external with the software and the finished case: the tier above Elements, aimed at somebody who wants a backup drive rather than a box with a drive in it. It is desktop-only, which makes it a direct competitor to nothing else in WD's range.
9 in-stock listings · ranked by cost per terabyte
Best cost per terabyte here right now: WD My Book 16TB Desktop HDD at $18.69/TB ($299 for 16TB, desktop hdd, used listing). The drive inside it is not disclosed by the maker.
| Model | Capacity | Family | Interface | Inside | Warranty | Condition | $/TB | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WD My Book 16TB Desktop HDD | 16TB | Desktop HDD | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $18.69 | $299 | Buy |
| WD My Book 22TB Desktop HDD | 22TB | Desktop HDD | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $28.75 | $632 | Buy |
| WD My Book 8TB Desktop HDD | 8TB | Desktop HDD | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $37.50 | $300 | Buy |
| WD My Book 16TB Desktop HDD | 16TB | Desktop HDD | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $43.12 | $690 | Buy |
| WD My Book 8TB Desktop HDD | 8TB | Desktop HDD | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $46.50 | $372 | Buy |
| WD My Book 6TB Desktop HDD | 6TB | Desktop HDD | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $52.73 | $316 | Buy |
| WD My Book 4TB Desktop HDD | 4TB | Desktop HDD | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $60.63 | $243 | Buy |
| WD My Book 4TB Desktop HDD | 4TB | Desktop HDD | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | NEW | $81.44 | $326 | Buy |
| WD My Book 2TB Desktop HDD | 2TB | Desktop HDD | USB 3.0 | NOT DISCLOSED | — | USED | $81.68 | $163 | Buy |
“Inside” is not disclosed by any maker for these products and the contents vary by batch, so we state that rather than guessing — see what the community has found by opening them. Warranty shows a dash because the makers' warranty pages did not resolve through our source-verification path; read the term on the maker's page for the exact model. Interface is the maker's own specification string, not a speed measurement.
Every My Book is a 3.5-inch drive with its own power adapter. There is no portable My Book, and that single fact defines the line: it is for storage that lives on a desk and stays there, which is why it competes on capacity and price per terabyte rather than on size or weight.
What separates it from Elements is a bundle rather than a drive. My Book ships with Western Digital's backup software, most units carry hardware encryption with password protection, and the case is a finished object rather than a plain shell. Whether that is worth the difference depends entirely on whether you will use any of it — a machine already running Time Machine or File History gets nothing from the software, and a drive behind a monitor gets nothing from the case.
Where My Book earns its place is a specific and common situation: somebody who wants one drive, wants it to work without configuration, and wants the data on it protected if the drive is stolen. Hardware encryption on an external is a genuinely useful feature and it is not present on the value line.
Against the wider market, My Book competes mostly with Seagate's One Touch, which occupies the same position in Seagate's range for the same reasons. Against its own sibling, the gap to Elements is visible in both tables and is the price of the bundle.
As with every external on this site, Western Digital does not publish which bare drive is inside a My Book. The enclosure is sold as an appliance and the component inside it is not part of the specification.
My Book gets shucked less often than Elements, and the reason is arithmetic rather than engineering: it costs more per terabyte, so the gap against a bare drive is usually smaller and sometimes negative. The shuck table on our external drives hub computes that gap per capacity, and at the capacities where a bare drive is cheaper, opening a My Book costs money and ends a warranty for nothing.
The hardware encryption is worth one specific warning if you are considering opening one. On units where encryption is implemented in the enclosure's controller rather than the drive, the data on the bare drive is not readable once it leaves that enclosure. That is the feature working as designed, and it is a genuinely bad surprise to discover after the fact. This is a general property of hardware-encrypted externals rather than a claim about any particular My Book model, and it is a reason to treat this line differently from Elements if shucking is the plan.
Recording technology reads 'not disclosed' on every row below, and the shucking guide carries what the community reports finding inside, as batch-varying observations rather than specifications.
My Book competes in a narrow band and it is worth being precise about who else is in it. Within Western Digital's own range it sits directly above Elements and has no portable equivalent, so its only internal competitor is the line it was designed to upsell from. Outside it, the direct rival is Seagate's One Touch in desktop form.
Against Elements the question is whether the bundle earns its price. Backup software matters if you do not already have a backup arrangement, and every modern operating system ships one, so for most people it does not. Encryption matters if the drive holds data whose exposure would be a problem, which is a real consideration for anyone carrying work or client material. The case matters if you can see the drive.
Against One Touch the comparison is closer to even, with one asymmetry: Seagate attaches a data recovery entitlement to its mainstream tier, and that is a genuinely different kind of benefit from software or a nicer shell. If the drive will hold the only copy of something, that entitlement is worth more than anything on the My Book feature list.
Where My Book is straightforwardly the right answer is a desktop backup target for somebody who wants encryption, wants it to work without configuration, and does not want to think about it again. That is a real and common requirement, and the price difference against the value line is small in absolute terms even where it looks large per terabyte.
Capacity is the other axis worth attention. As a desktop-only line, My Book reaches the upper end of Western Digital's external range, and buying a rung above what you think you need is usually cheaper per terabyte and always cheaper than replacing a drive that filled. Our backup guidance covers sizing against the data you actually have rather than the disk it lives on.
My Book adds backup software, hardware encryption on most units and a more finished case; Elements is the barebones tier with none of those. My Book is desktop-only, while Elements comes in desktop and portable forms. Neither maker publishes the drive inside. The price gap between them is the price of the bundle, and both tables show it live.
Physically yes, but check the arithmetic first: My Book costs more per terabyte than Elements, so the gap against a bare drive is often smaller and sometimes negative. There is a second consideration specific to encrypted externals — where encryption lives in the enclosure controller rather than the drive, the bare drive is unreadable outside the case. Our shucking guide covers the mechanics.
No. Every My Book is a 3.5-inch desktop unit with its own mains power adapter. Western Digital's portable line is My Passport, which is a different product built around 2.5-inch bus-powered drives with a much lower capacity ceiling.
Hardware encryption with password protection is a documented feature of most My Book units and it is a real protection against someone taking the drive. It is not a substitute for a backup: an encrypted drive that fails is an encrypted drive you cannot read either. Our backup guidance covers the 3-2-1 framing this fits into.
The column shows a dash because Western Digital's warranty pages did not resolve through our source-verification path, and a marketplace listing's warranty claim is not a manufacturer specification. Read the term on WD's page for the exact model. Opening the enclosure ends the external warranty regardless of the term.
Because they are not in stock right now. The table is computed when the page loads and out-of-stock listings are excluded entirely rather than shown at a last-known price, so a capacity nobody is selling does not appear at all.
Specification claims on this page were checked against the pages below on 4 August 2026. Where a widely-repeated figure did not survive that check, we report what the source says now and say so in the text rather than repeating the familiar number.