Western Digital is one of the best-known manufacturers of external storage. The company’s My Book Duo range is an ideal solution for photographers and videographers. The My Book™ Duo drive has massive capacity for storing photos, videos, documents and music. How much is WD 20TB My Book Duo desktop raid external hard drive? RAID-0 mode provides super-fast performance with up to 360MB/s2 sequential read speeds (using the USB Type-C™ port). Switch to RAID-1 configuration for redundancy and to mirror data on the WD Red™ drives inside. A USB Type-C port with all cables included makes it universally compatible (supports USB 3.1 Gen 1/3.0/2.0). Two USB 3.0 Type-A hub ports deliver flexibility for additional accessories. Find more in WD 20TB My Book Duo desktop raid external hard drive review.
WD 20TB My Book Duo desktop raid external hard drive specs
- USB 3.0
- USB 3.1 Gen 1
- Connector : USB-A
- Compatibility
- Formatted NTFS for out-of-the-box compatibility with Windows® 10, Windows 8.1 or Windows 7. Requires reformatting for other operating systems.
- Dimensions (L X W X H)6.3″ x 3.94″ x 7.09″In The Box
- My Book Duo Desktop RAID storage
- WD Discovery™ software for WD Backup™, WD Security™ and WD Drive Utilities™
- USB-C to USB-C cable
- USB-C to USB-A cable
- AC adapter
- Disk replacement tool
- Quick install guide
Compare WD My Book Duo vs Seagate
| WD 20TB My Book Duo Desktop RAID External Hard Drive | WD 12TB Elements Desktop Hard Drive, USB 3.0 – WDBWLG0120HBK-NESN,Black | Seagate (STEL10000400) Backup Plus Hub 10TB External Hard Drive | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compatible Devices | Desktop | Desktop | Laptop, Desktop |
| Digital Storage Capacity | 20 TB | 12 TB | 10 TB |
| Hard Disk Description | Desktop | Desktop | Desktop |
| Hard Disk Size | 20.0 TB | 12.0 TB | 10.0 TB |
| Hardware Interface | USB | USB 3.0 | USB |
| Item Dimensions | 6.30 x 3.94 x 7.09 inches | 5.31 x 1.89 x 6.53 inches | 4.64 x 1.61 x 7.80 inches |
| Item Weight | 5.25 pounds | — | 2.34 pounds |
| Memory Storage Capacity | 2 TB | 12 TB | 1 TB |
| Model Year | 2017 | — | 2017 |
| Size | 20TB | 12TB | 10TB |
What is good in WD 20TB My Book Duo desktop raid external hard drive?
Massive Capacity
The My Book™ Duo drive has up to 28TB1 capacity with a single cable. 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.
It’s an impressive drive
The My Book Duo drive has massive storage for your massive media collection. With super-fast transfer rates, you can store or archive all your large files from DSLRs, action cameras, drones, and other devices.
RAID-0 Ready Out of the Box
Ready to perform at maximum speed and capacity in default mode, RAID-0. Reconfigure the drive to RAID-1 for redundancy (data mirroring), or use it as two independent drives (JBOD) with the included WD Drive Utilities™ software.
RAID-Optimized WD Red™ Drives
The My Book™ Duo drive comes with RAID-optimized WD Red™ drives inside to deliver high-speed, quality storage to rely on. RAID-optimized firmware is perfect for two-disk array systems with auto management of drive operations to help ensure read/write cycle data integrity.
256-Bit AES Hardware Encryption and Password Protection
The My Book™ Duo drive comes with 256-bit AES Hardware Encryption with WD Security™ software built in to help keep private content secure. Set a personalized password to activate hardware encryption and data protection.
USB 3.1 Ready, Plus USB 3.0 Hub Ports
Compatible with USB 3.1 and USB 3.0/2.0, the My Book™ Duo drive works to deliver high-speed connectivity no matter the interface. Includes both USB Type-C™ to Type-C and Type-C to Type-A cables.
The My Book™ Duo drive can serve as a quasi-docking station with 2x USB 3.0 Type-A hub ports for accessories, including additional storage, keyboard, and mouse, card readers, USBs, or phone sync and charge.
WD 20TB My Book Duo desktop raid external hard drive review
Design and build
With just a LED status light that indicates device power and device activity, the front of the My Book Duo 20TB has a very minimalistic feel. 7 inches tall and 4 inches deep, this rugged device weighs in at 5.25lbs, just slightly heavier than the other capacities. The body of the 20GB My Book Duo is black plastic following suit of the other redesigned WD products (WD 20TB My Book Duo review).
Ports
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.
WD notes that this is a USB 3.1 Gen 1 port, omitting to state that this is what USB 3.0 is called these days. That connection has plenty of bandwidth for the output of two conventional hard drives even if they’re configured in striped RAID 1, and any extra can be used by other devices connected via a USB 3.0 hub.
This provides two additional USB 3.0 ports at the rear, allowing you to use the My Book Duo as a basic docking station, or even to chain additional storage devices should you wish.
How to configure
Striping is the default configuration. If you’d prefer a mirroring, it would be best to configure that using the provided software tools before loading any data – because any changes to the drive layout will delete all the data on there during the configuration process.
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.
A small plastic tool is included for you to pop the top of the unit off and access the drives inside for replacement. The drives are mounted on tool-less trays that slide out easily.
Management
Like all solutions in the WD line, the My Book Duo 20TB is managed by WD Drive Utilities, which includes features such as RAID configuration (RAID0, RAID1, and JBOD in this case). This application is the only way to configure the My Book Duo and hasn’t changed much over the past few years. Comprehensive for its class and simple to use, configuring the drive was a seamless process–from the set-up wizard to the application itself.
Note that WD Drive Utilities can only be configured via USB; the Thunderbolt port cannot be used to configure the Duo or run health tests.
The RAID management section displays the RAID status so you to see all current configurations (or change them) and if everything is working fine.
In the Diagnose section, users can run a status check to search for potential areas of failure, which was a very fast process. Users can also scan their drive for other serious issues such as bad sectors. Understandably, this feature took some more time to complete; however, this extensive scan worked well.
Software
Pre-installed on the My Book Duo is the WD Discovery tool that allows for the downloading and installing of WD Drive Utilities, WD Backup and WD Security software.
Of these, the WD Drive utilities are the most vital, as they allow you to change the RAID configuration of the Duo.
The backup tool is basic though serviceable, allowing you to secure specific local folders hourly, daily or monthly. You can set up multiple schedules, allowing different frequencies of backup for each folder structure specified.
The fact that Western Digital still doesn’t bundle a live backup tool with its devices is a disappointment, but there are plenty of software products (some even free) that will do this for you if you prefer not to lose an hour’s work through a crash or power cut.
The security tool enables you to utilize the 256-bit AES hardware encryption and define a password that is required to unlock the drive. A nice twist to this is that you can pre-sanction the computer you are using, though moving the drive to another system would then automatically initiate a password request.
As strong as this potentially can be, password quality aside, it does rely on the owner not forgetting it. Because without the password or the machine it was originated on, the data is utterly irretrievable.
In overall terms, the included WD software does enough to be useful, without going any further than that.
WD 20TB My Book Duo desktop raid external hard drive performance review
To test the My Book Duo 20TB, we connected it to our HP Z640 workstation via a USB 3.0 port and analyzed at its performance during a large file 2MB transfer benchmarking test and looked at RAID0 and RAID1 configurations in both sequential and random scenarios.
In sequential 2MB performance, the MyBook Duo was able to reach 364.63MB/s read and 353.52MB/s write in RAID0 while hitting 115.34MB/s read and 206.04MB/s write in RAID1. Looking at random 2MB performance, the new My Book Duo recorded 144.48MB/s read and 148.34MB/s write in RAID0, where RAID1 transfer speeds measured 94.39MB/s read and 129.84MB/s write.