If we turn the beauty, we will see that half of the case is cut through with the holed for air better circulation. This external HDD model is equipped with a fan for forced HDD cooling. Besides, the hard drive is also cooled down passively: the air inside the plastic box heats up, rises and leaves the case through the holes in the side. Since the case cannot remain empty, the cold air is naturally sucked in from the bottom of the case. In fact, external HDDs overheating is a very serious problem: if the cooling is insufficient, the HDD will die very quickly. That is why I paid special attention to the thermal state of our HDD throughout the entire test session, and I am very happy to state that WD engineers did a great job: even under the heaviest workloads the drive felt well.

But the major trump of the new WD drive design can be seen only after you plug the power supply cable:

The drive got suddenly lit like a Christmas tree with all sorts of lights :)

There are two LEDs along the sides of the drive casing, which shine very exciting red. Together with the purple background light we get thrilling night-club atmosphere…

And this is the way this product looks at night:

Very nice, isn’t it? But as for me, I don’t feel like working at all when I look at this drive... But I have to, I have to work :)

The back panel of the drive carried the connectors for interface FireWire (two connectors, as the bus allows building up chains of devices) and USB 2.0 cables. Also there is a power supply connector. As you see, there is now power switch or button, and the drive powers up immediately, when we plug in the cable from a special PSU supplied together with the drive.