The Essential suffix somehow implies USB 3.0 support. WD’s 3.5” external drives fall under the My Book brand and they have visibly more ventilation than the GoFlex Desk I reviewed.Īs luck would have it, last week Western Digital announced its own 3TB external drive: the My Book Essential. I wasn’t terribly pleased and I wondered if Western Digital’s external enclosure might be better suited for heat dissipation. The performance of the drive wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but the poorly ventilated chassis seemed ill equipped to deal with the thermal load a 5-platter, 7200RPM 3TB drive would throw at it. It was a 5 platter, 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT inside an external GoFlex Desk chassis. Two months ago I looked at the world’s first 3TB desktop hard drive.