Wd 8tb My Book Desktop External Hard Drive - Usb 30 - Review

If y'all're on the hunt for a bones desktop-class external hard drive with lots of space, then the Western Digital My Book Duo ($449.99) is worth a long wait. Nearly external drives max out at 4TB or 6TB, but the My Book Duo( at Amazon Canada) gives you a roomy 8TB of local storage. Music, photo, and video collectors, also as other digital pack rats, should put this on their short list.

Design and Features
This is one of the most spacious backup drives on the market. The My Book Duo comes formatted for NTFS, with two 4TB drives striped in a RAID 0 array (eight terabytes total infinite). You tin can employ the included WD utility to reconfigure the drive for RAID 1 mirroring (4 terabytes), or setup as JBOD (only a agglomeration of disks). Simply put, RAID 0 gives you one 8TB logical drive, JBOD gives you ii individual 4TB drives, and RAID one gives y'all i 4TB drive that protects your information in example one physical drive assembly fails. In a RAID 1 configuration, the My Book Duo makes two copies of each file: 1 on each physical drive associates. That way if one fails, y'all nonetheless have the second copy to work with. The default RAID 0 setting gives the all-time performance, so that's how nosotros tested the drive. The drive volition work with Macs, and so long as you reformat the drive to HFS+. This is a little disappointing, because Seagate drives come with a NTFS driver for the Mac that lets you use them with both Macs and Windows PCs without reformatting (for example, if yous need to apace transfer information betwixt systems in a mixed role).

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The chassis is looks like to the Western Digital My Volume Thunderbolt Duo( at Amazon Canada) and the Western Digital My Volume Studio( at Amazon Canada), aside from the two condition LEDs for the dual difficult drives. It measures about 6.5 by 4 past 6.25 (HWD) and about 5 pounds, and so information technology's definitely a drive that will stay at your desk, rather than travel with yous. The silvery-grayness chassis has a charcoal-gray inset, where y'all'll find the drive's ability lite and RAID status lights. The back panel has a jack for the AC adapter, a USB iii.0 micro-b port for the included USB cable, and two upstream USB 3.0 ports for additional storage and charging your devices like a smartphone or tablet. The dual USB 3.0 ports are unique amongst external desktop drives. You can connect an boosted drive for more storage, plug in a mouse or keyboard, or even charge your phone or tablet using the ports. The hub will assist you use the bulldoze with Windows laptops that accept only one or two USB ports.

The My Volume Duo is also available in a 4TB capacity ($279.99), 6TB capacity ($349.99), and 12TB capacity ($649.99).

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If one of the drive assemblies in the enclosure goes bad, an LED calorie-free on the front console will allow you know past blinking carmine. Replacing it is somewhat easy. Y'all merely pop the lid, unscrew a subclass, and slide the drive out vertically. Replacement drive assemblies from Western Digital will come up with guide pins that brand the process easy. Drive arrays with hot-swappable bays, like the LaCie 2big Thunderbolt 2( at Amazon Canada) and Promise Pegasus R4( at Amazon Canada), are easier to replace, though. That said, the LaCie and Promise drives are made for high-availability environments, similar engineering and graphics arts studios. The My Volume Duo is more of a premium home backup drive.

Software support for the My Book Duo is good (bated from the NTFS driver if yous're a Mac user in a mixed Mac/PC environment). The drive comes with Windows Backup and Time Machine back up, as well as WD Smartware Pro backup software for timed or continuous file backups. WD Smartware Pro can exist linked to a Dropbox business relationship, for cloud-based backup. If you have a demand for complete backup for disaster recovery, Western Digital has licensed and branded Acronis True Image WD Edition software, which is available as download for free from Western Digital's back up website. Acronis True Epitome lets you recover everything, including system files, even if your kick bulldoze is completely unreadable. The drive'due south warranty is good, only non great: two years instead of the three we'd like to see on premium drives like this.

Performance
Like the Seagate Fill-in Plus Desktop Drive (5TB)( at Amazon Canada), our Editors' Option for desktop-class drives, the My Volume Duo had a picayune trouble running the PCMark 7 drive test. Equally a fill-in, we ran the PCMark 5 test, which returned a half dozen,425 points score, much slower than the 10,796 points garnered by the southward Seagate Backup Plus, as well equally the 10,561 points of the Buffalo Drivestation DDR 2TB (HD-GD2.0U3).

On our Drag-and-Driblet test, the MyBook Duo took 14 seconds to write the 1.2GB test binder, the same event as the Seagate Fill-in Plus. The Buffalo Drivestation was faster at 12 seconds. The My Book Duo costs virtually 6 cents per gigabyte at its $450 list price. That's smashing, only it's notwithstanding two cents per gigabyte more than expensive than the Seagate Backup Plus Desktop Drive. The Buffalo Drivestation is a bit pricier, at 7 cents per gigabyte. If you prepare the drive up for RAID 1, however, the My Book Duo is closer to xi cents per gigabyte. That effigy is actually worth information technology if y'all use the bulldoze as a double-fail rubber fill-in.

Ultimately, the Western My Digital Volume Duo works all-time equally a fill-in drive or a repository for large personal media libraries. The 8TB is a lot of space, as is 4TB of doubled data protection. However, if all you need is space, then the Seagate Fill-in Plus Desktop drive is a better buy, and remains our top pick for desktop-class external difficult drives.

Western Digital My Book Duo (8TB)

Cons

The Bottom Line

The spacious 8GB Western Digital My Book Duo desktop-class external difficult drive comes with two drive assemblies, for either actress room or added safe for your backups.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/western-digital-my-book-duo-8tb

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