A Gauge for Your Backup Hard Drive

We all know we should back up our precious data and digital pictures on our computer's internal hard drive, and many people use an external hard drive to avert disaster when their computer crashes. But how do you know what's on the drive and how much space is left without a time-consuming search or a series of mouse clicks?

Western Digital quickly and visually answers these questions with a new display available for its external hard drives. The "e-label" shows how much free space is left on the drive and can also be customized to show what's on the drive using WD's SmartWare software. The display, which is available on the My Book Elite and My Book Studio hard drives, is visible even when the drive is unplugged.

Think of it as a gas gauge for your backup hard drive, except it also lets you know the exact contents of the tank.

-- Posted by Doug Newcomb, special to MSN Tech & Gadgets