Western Digital Corp. has expanded its lineup of shared storage appliances with external hard disks that expand users' horizons: The My Book World Edition drives let designated users securely access documents, images, videos, or other digital content from anywhere in the world as easily as if it was on their local PC hard disks. WD Anywhere Access software allows friends and coworkers to share information without the chore of having to upload it to a Web storage site or log into a third-party access system, even if the PC the drive's plugged into is switched off.

A Data OnHand feature makes the 500GB and 1TB My Books part of Windows Explorer and Windows applications' Open and Save As options, while offering remote backup and workgroup document sharing over the Internet or a local network. The 500GB My Book World Edition is $279, with the two-drive World Edition II model -- configurable as either 1TB of online storage or a 500GB mirrored RAID 1 setup -- priced at $499. Each comes with EMC Retrospect Express backup software, one Ethernet port, and one USB 2.0 port to add more storage.