WD's new desktop drive has so much space I bet you'll never fill it

Whether you're shooting photos with the Galaxy S23 Ultra or recording video with the iPhone 14 Pro Max, it doesn't take long before your on-board storage fills up – and over time, your local and external storage fills up too, especially when you're archiving your computer and downloading purchased media such as music and movies. I'm writing this with a trio of SSDs connected to my MacBook Pro, and it'll soon be upgrade time as they get full up yet again. If that also sounds like a you problem, WD has just the device for you.

How does 22TB of storage sound?

The 22TB My Book Desktop Hard Drive is seriously roomy, and it's not as expensive as you might expect – the RRP is £594, which works out as £27 per terabyte. By comparison, increasing the spec of an iPhone 14 Pro from 512GB to 1TB is £180, which is £360 a terabyte.

Why hard disks still deserve a place on your desktop

There's no doubt that in terms of sheer speed, the best SSDs are much better for PS5s and PCs than hard disks. But when sheer speed isn't a factor, the cost of hard disk storage is a fraction of what you'd pay for the equivalent SSD.  For example, our current pick of the best internal SSD, the Kingston Fury, is around £440 for 4TB: £110 per terabyte. External SSDs are typically even more expensive.

The WD My Book isn't just roomy. It offers AES encryption, automatic backups, Windows and Mac compatibility, and wide USB compatibility up to USB 3.2 Gen 1.

I hate to sound like Bill Gates, who famously (but only allegedly) said that 640Kb of RAM "ought to be enough for anybody", but I think 22TB is more than enough for even the most demanding users. But if you need even more storage and reliability for workplace use, WD also offers a 44TB version of the My Book Duo with RAID-optimised WD drives inside. That's a tad more expensive, though: the 44TB version is just short of £1,500.