WD 28TB My Book Duo Desktop HDD USB 3.1 Gen 1 with software for device management, backup and password protection USB-C and USB-A cables RAID 0/1, JBOD

So far I have bought 12 of these WD My Book Duo drives (The 24TB capacity model). I have 3 NAS servers at home, one of which is a media server, another is used to backup the media server and the third is my main network server for all my data. I had previously purchased WD Red 6TB drives to populate the servers and as time has gone on, the drives have started to get quite full (Each server takes 6 disks in a RAID 5 config, meaning that each server had around 27TB of storage space available). I had been looking to upgrade the servers to a higher storage capacity, but reader, as you know, buying hard drives is very expensive and for some bizarre reason, prices can fluctuate by around +/- £100 in a day on Amazon, which makes no sense whatsoever. I found out about "shucking" drives which is an ok way of getting drives of a higher capacity at a cheaper cost to go inside servers, but they can have issues with one of the pins needing to be covered so that the drive will power up. I don't know if my servers would have that issue - and as the drives in the servers are in a RAID config, I didn't want to run the risk of losing all my data. I then saw these WD My Book Duo drives that come with WD Red drives inside them. I downloaded the manual to see if the drives can be easily removed - and it said in the manual that Western Digital provide a plastic tool for popping the drive box open so that the individual drives can be removed. So, I took the plunge and bought 3 of these so that I would have a total of 6 x 12tb WD Red drives. On the day that I placed the order, they were down in price - and if you put these in your "wish list" you can monitor on a daily basis how frequently the prices change. I bought them on a day when they had dropped in price by approximately £100. So, thanks to Prime, the My Book Duo's arrived the next day and I set about removing the disks from their cases. This was a bit fiddly at first, but once I got the first drive out of it's plastic holder, the rest were easy. I downloaded WD's own drive diagnostics program from the WD website as I wanted to make sure the drives were all ok and had no bad sectors. I have a external hard drive enclosure that I connected each drive up to in turn and ran the extended diagnostic test that checks every single sector of the drives. This takes around 18-20 hours per drive, but my data is important, so I was happy to take the tests slowly. All 6 drives passed the tests and I was then able to put them in the NAS. While the diagnostics were running, I used that time to backup the main media server NAS to it's backup server, just to be on the safe side and then when all 6 drives had been thoroughly tested, I set about putting them in the media server. I won't bore you with that process as it's irrelevant to the review, however, it worked ok and at the end of it, I had around 55TB of usable space on the media server. Once that server was completed, next time that Amazon reduced the price of the My Book Duo's again, I purchasd more for the rest of the servers. And, best of all, as I had previously used 6TB WD Red drives on my servers, once each disk had been removed and partitions deleted, I was able to put 2 6TB drives inside each My Book Duo so that I have additional backup storage available for all my other data. So - if you plan on shucking the drives to increase capacity in a server, these are the best way of buying WD Red drives. If you plan on just using the drives as they are, inside the My Book Duo enclosure, then again, these are the best way of buying WD Red drives. WD Red's are the best drives for use on servers and I also find them to be the best to use for backups.

I'm quite impressed with this harddrive unit. At first I had to format it to get widows to recognise the harddrives. Even though it states that it's ready from work the box to use. There was also a big issue with the fan blowing it's head off which was very loud. It was only later I discovered the there's is a clear plastic wrapping around the fan area which has to be removed. I've got poor eye sight so this doesn't help me. Once all the flaws where resolved it worked a like a charm. The harddrives do go into sleep mode and does take a while to wake up. But upon reading the reviews from the website this is normal to save wearing the harddrives out. Also there's a constant ticking noise which again is normal. Transfer speeds vary. But it serves its job for reliability and performance. Would I buy again. Yes it's ticked everything I was expecting.

When my NAS volume went "read only'' upon resizing storage pool (could be a software bug, could be just me, doing something dumb and unnescessary), I decided it's time to scap RAID5 and go RAID10 - as I had no means to do a backup of full RAID5 capacity anyway (remembering that RAID is not a backup... and losing 60tb of personal data would hurt a lot). I figured it'd be easier to just have one unified backup - than to salvage my current 18tb of photos and videos with my small collection of 5tb and 2tb external backup drives. 36TB was within best price/performance bracket, as of March 2024. Anything less would not cover my NAS capacity in RAID10, and the 44TB version (which I would have prefered) was unreasonable 300 GBP more. Design & noise: I like the discreete black box design. But I wouldn't want it on my desk due to noise - same as my NAS. That's why they both live in a corridor's shoe racking... 3.5'' spinners are noisy, and this is no exception. I also wish there was a simple external button to disable the blinking white LED (I think design-wise it looks fine, however...) - I have LED's disabled on my NAS and Wi-fi router, but I can't do it on this one (maybe through wd software?). With everything enabled, it'd look like a Christmas tree down there, and I don't want it. Speed & reliability: As I'm writing this, my NAS is pulling out - 7 TB, 500 item - chunk of backup with sustained speed of 90-100 MB/s. There are random bursts of 200+ MB/s, followed by dips to 86 MB/S, but 90-100 MB/s is an average. Highest I've seen is 310+ MB/s - but that's isolated file/start of copy (which is a good speed for 3.5'' dinosaurs, imo.). I'm sure there's plenty reviews and benchmarks with speeds out there (that I haven't bothered to check) but this is what I get. I have it connected with the default USB-C-to-A cable provided - in out of box configuration. The NAS in question is TS-464 in RAID10, loaded with 4x WD gold drives, and I have it attached to one of the usb 3.2 gen 2 spec ports (orange one, at the back). Sustained speed is a bit underwhelming, but not unexpected - especially with data integrity check enabled. Thankfully, I'm not in a hurry, and I am more concerned about reliability. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on that, after just a few days of usage. It absorbed 18 TB backup without a hickup (though it took days...). I'm hoping, that restore will be the same. From there, only time will tell. Final thoughts: I see this as a good BULK BACKUP storage unit. I wouldn't trust it with 36 TB of non-backup data, as it is - in RAID 0 configuration. Marketing says "Free up valuable space on all your computers. Store and back up your photo, video, and music collections, and important documents in one reliable place". Not a good idea, imo. Even if the drives are reliable, failures do happen, and losing so much data would be terrible. More reasonable option for non-essential single copy storage would be RAID 1, but then you're looking at rather slow (in the age of nvme's), rather noisy, and feature-plain storage unit, with annoying white LED, and a price tag of 600+ GBP for 18 TB. In that case, I think even just two bay NAS makes more sense, even if it's a few hundred GBP more. But as a simple, user-friendly connect-and-backup solution, this is a good value.

The hardware part of this product is brilliant, however if you are buying this to use to backup your machine then be aware the supplied WDBackup software does not work if you have to rebuild a machine. All your data is on the drive but you can not select it to restore. Following the support links this is quite a well known issue, but no sign of any update or fix. As these drives are sold to do this backup task then this is a disaster, and you could be left stranded by WD software and support. Luckily for me, I had done multiple copies, and could restore the machine from other sources. But if this drive is going to be your backup and recovery in case of a machine failure or rebuild then it is going to leave you with nothing. You will need to buy additional software that actually works.

Whilst only had for few weeks as my technical needs were bit much (for any USB external); this is a fabulous USB twindrive box. Had the 2x12TB 24TB version. When put into RAID1 via the very simple software, it is fast for access and has the extra reliability option of data being accessible even if one disk should crap-out. Remember RAID is NOT meant to be a resilient backup method. Its a handy tool for daily used data storage for reslilience or pur speed, but always have a robust backup policy to keep you beloved data safe (even google drive/M$ One Drive/Apple iDisk or whatever, are better than not backing up). just my advice

I bought this item as external Raid 1 storage device for a new Mac Studio M2 Max. One would have thought that configuring the disk for this purpose would have been straightforward but the reality was very different. My mistake was trying to use the WD setup software which created something of a nightmare and basically did not work with the macOS. I was on the point of returning the whole device when a friend suggested that I configure the disk with the macOS. This worked and the unit is now happily operating as I intended. However I went through over a week of tribulation reaching this outcome. At times I thought I had lost all my data and actually had to go through multiple reformats and copying of files. All of this takes a very long time when we are talking about an 18TB disk. Support did respond but usually took several days and was basically just general advice delivered by way of articles. The first piece of advice was actually to uninstall the WD utilities that are supplied with the disk and instead to use a different piece of WD software! Very frustrating and frankly advice that should be given to Mac users at the first opportunity - when buying the unit. As it happens the alternative WD software did not work either, but at least one step and several days of frustration would have been saved had I been told at the first instance not to use the utilities. Anyway the disk is operating well now, but a very trying experience.

Disk is great, bit noisy when does all write raid is easy to configure had a bad experience with 2 used drive both broken as they are mechanical beware

I got this for a great price on amazon (it was on offer). I was considering buying two WD Red drives separately to upgrade my storage capacity, but happened across this unit which contains the red drives I was going to buy at a much cheaper price. I have an internal 8tb seagate drive but I have noticed that these drives connected by USB C are much faster than my internal drive on 6gb sata. This is probably because the unit comes configured as a striped raid out of the box, no not surprising that it is faster than a single drive I suppose. Easy to setup, I just plugged it in and the drive was detected immediately and I started using it. Installation of the software to manage the drives is recommended, and also before you start copying files onto the drive I would recommend thinking about how you want the drives configuring as reconfiguration will wipe all data from the drives so best configure it first. Options for configuration arestrip (default setting for speed and capacity), mirrored (for data security) or JBOD (for capacity).