Once the cable is connected and the drive is positioned, it can then be connected to your computer. It takes a few moments to mount, slightly longer than a single drive but still fast enough. As a dual drive, the hardware features two internal hard drives that, by means of a hardware RAID, can be configured to maximise capacity and speed (RAID 0) or safety (RAID 1). The new My Book Duo has diverged in one major way from the previous designs; the rather lame ‘Book’ analogy has finally been terminated. In my office, I have a 12TB Duo (dual 6TB drives), and from the outside, these units look the same, even down to the finest details.

Incidentally, you can also set the unit to JBOD (which stands for ‘just a bunch of drives’), where each drive becomes a single volume/logical drive. We’re not sure why you might want to go this route, as it offers no redundancy against drive failure (like mirroring) or performance benefits (striping). But anyway, the option is there.The beauty of the Duo is that you can easily remove the top and replace the drives if required, assuming you’ve removed all the data previously and powered down the drives. The switch to the latest USB-C port is the biggest step forward. The old USB 3.0 Micro B connector was one of the worst connector designs of all time, and for me has been the cause of countless drive failures. It’s absence here can only be a good thing. That’s realistically the only way to use one of these, feeding it data daily that builds up to represent a much larger capacity. External hard drives have come along way in a short time, and while the drives themselves have changed little, the technology and software around them have advanced at speed. Looking at the specifications, the interface to the host system is only USB 3.2 Gen 1, or 5Gb/s, but that’s still more than enough transfer speed for the combined efforts of two 22TB drives in RAID 0.

Unplug the router's power and wait 30 seconds. Reconnect power to the router and wait for it to reboot. Once this is complete, attempt to access the Dashboard again. Chance of failure: higher. If the normal chance of failure of one drive is 1%, then the chance of failure with RAID-0 is almost double at 1.99%. This is the default mode of My Book Duo. With RAID-0, each file is split between two drives. As with RAID-1, your drive can read from both drives at the same time, so the reading speed is theoretically almost double (for sequential reading). Meanwhile, the storage capacity is the same as normal. If you have two 8TB drives, then when using them in RAID-0, you will have a single 16TB drive with one drive letter. The disadvantage of RAID-0 is that if either or both of the drives fail, you will lose the data in both drives, therefore the chance of failure is almost double.

a. The proprietary nature of the hardware RAID implementation means that the individual disk drives CANNOT be read outside of the MyBook Duo enclosure. I believe this is not unique to the MyBook Duo as many other RAID enclosures have the same characteristics. On the 20TB model in RAID 0, striped mode, you have a capacity of about 18.1TB available to use from the outset. Having this much capacity sounds like a dream, especially for those using a 4TB external drive or a smaller Duo model. But the dream of having this much space is also, oddly, something of a nightmare. While it’s still a ‘My Book’ product, the new hardware looks much more like what it truly is; a tiny desktop server.

videos and 360 photos can take up a lot of space, especially if you use high quality formats such as Prores or TIFF. I’ve almost filled up two 8TB hard drives and was looking for an external hard drive and chose the WD My Book Duo is an external hard drive with two bays that can each accommodate standard 3.5-inch hard drives. The company’s My Book Duo range is an ideal solution for photographers and videographers. It’s also seen a recent and significant update, with an all-new design and ultra-fast connection.

It’s tempting that based purely on appearances, the 44TB Duo is identical to the old 12TB model, although other than the drives, we did notice one significant difference. The latest WD Duo is a complete redesign from the previous generation which had existed for a few years. Although it optimises the drive, it’s not a great solution for secure storage as I need something that is as robust as possible. Connection to your computer is via USB Type-C, and cables come for both this standard and to convert a conventional USB 3.0 port to the Type-C variety if you haven’t embraced that newish connector yet.