Having launched a hard disk drive of the largest storage capacity, which has also proven to be the today’s fastest solution (see our review called Western Digital WD2500JB HDD: More than Drivezilla?!), Western Digital Company decided not to take any rest and introduced the today’s largest (in terms of storage capacity) external HDD – WD 250GB Special Edition Combo Drive.

The word “Combo” is mentioned in its name not for nothing. It implies that the drive is equipped with two types of interfaces: FireWire and USB 2.0. Before that, WD equipped its external HDDs only with one of these interfaces: with USB 2.0 or with FireWire, which definitely made them less attractive for the customers. Unfortunately, FireWire interface (IEEE 1394) didn’t become as popular in the PC market, as it did in the Apple platform, even though our tests showed that it is much more suitable for external hard disk drives (see our article called USB 2.0 against FireWire). However, now FireWire is winning the hearts of PC owners little by little. Of course, Apple’s decision to revise the FireWire devices licensing procedure told positively on the growing popularity of this interface.

But if we don’t focus our attention only on performance, we will see that USB interface is also very suitable for external HDDs. It makes these drives more mobile, so that they can be used for fast data exchange between different hardware platforms.

As for the drive’s storage capacity, we have no suggestions here. Those of you who deal with external HDDs know it very well that free space on the drive can never be too big. That is why we are very glad that Western Digital makes its external HDD models as big in terms of storage capacity as the desktop ones.

Well, now it’s high time you finally met our today’s hero!

Closer Look

As usual, we begin with the box, which is very colorful:

In this case I really wanted to say “Box” with the capital letter, because this BOX deserves special attention. First of all, it is a really big box. It is even not very convenient to hold. Secondly, it is a pretty heavy box, so you should feel really happy to get a real “thing” for your few banknotes. Thirdly, the box is very nicely designed and decorated.

But the disk drive is even cooler and more beautiful than the box. Have a look:

The matt casing of the previous models has been replaced with a fashionable “aquarium-like” design. A very successful combination of transparent and semi-transparent parts hides what should be hidden and sets off what is should be displayed. The only thing that made me feel a little uncomfortable, was a black sticker covering the standard label of all WD HDDs. Actually, I did know for sure that there is a Western Digital 2500JB hard drive inside the box, but I wish they left the label…