Despite the benefits of network attached storage with RAID and QNAP’s recent attempt to bring the technology to the home user, consumers generally still seem to prefer external USB hard drives for additional storage capacity and data backup, due mainly to the convenience, ease, and cost of these devices.  For those employing multiple external hard drives, it can often be difficult to keep track of each drive’s contents and remaining capacity.

To address this, Western Digital today announced the Elite version of its popular My Book line of external hard drives.  As a slightly higher end version of its My Book Essential product, the Elite features an innovative e-label on the spine of the book that utilizes non-volatile e-paper technology to display drive encryption status, available capacity, and other user specified information even when the drive isn’t connected to a power source.  Available sizes range from 1TB-2TB with an MSRP near $300 for the 2TB version.  Add some USB 3.0 and this thing would really be cool.