WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo
My next digital fortress
Western Digital hard-drives accompany me now for quite a while. Besides WD’s mobile Elements drives I used the My Book Mirror as my stationary backup-drive to save basically all my valuable digital data in a Raid1 configuration.
In terms of size (the old My Book Mirror had a capacity of 2TB) and transfer speed I needed an update.
I experimented with network storages first (WD My Cloud Mirror) but had to realize that this setup did not cut it for me in terms of speed and convenience.
I could not attach my MacBook directly to this hard-drive and WLAN was too slow often times. I am used to shoot in RAW and therefore I often have to backup bigger packages which easily sum up into couple of GBs. Reviewing my picture archive on the external HDD over WLAN with Adobe Bridge (which I normally use to review my photos) was also not ideal because the time needed to generate preview pictures was for me too slow.
So the decision was made for an attachable external hard-drive with Raid1 capability. I chose the My Book Thunderbolt Duo from Western Digital in the 6TB configuration for this task.
The Thunderbolt Duo features two 3,5' 3TB hard-drives which can be used in Raid0 (stripping) for maximum size and speed (ideal for video editing directly on the hard-drive while connected) or Raid1 (mirroring all data on both hard-drives) for maximum safety.
The key feature which is also reflected in the hard-drive’s name itself are its two Thunderbolt ports, which enable the hard-drive for the fastest commercially available data transfer. I have to say that the Thunderbolt Duo is super fast on my Macbook Pro and you can really feel the difference in speed.
I couldn’t measure the excact speed per minute but it definitally transfers big data a lot faster compared to my USB3 drives here.
The two Thunderbolt ports enable multiple usage scenarios, i.e. to connect other peripherals like a display while the hard-drive stays permanently connected to the port on your machine. Because of its stripping capabilities in Raid0 which boosts the read/write speed of the harddrive and its fast connection to the PC, the Thunderbolt Duo can be used as a permanent memory “extension” that feels like an “internal” one in terms of speed.
The only drawback is, that the Thunderbolt Duo seems to be primarily made for Macs. On the Western Digital website only MacOS is mentioned as supported operation system (no word about Windows) and the absence of other ports besides Thunderbolt (which is still a rare port on Windows PCs) make the usage with other non-Apple products more complicated. This is no big problem for me personally but in general it would have been nice if this external drive also featured a USB 3.0 port just to stay as flexible as possible.
The design still follows WD’s “book” metapher although one has to say that with the proportion of the product this design language element feels quite “stretched”. WD tries to match the product’s appearance with Apple’s typical aluminium look, what they archive quite well especially if you consider that the outer surface is made of plastic instead of aluminum.
The disadvantage of this fact is, that it squeaks when you grab the hard-drive to carry it arround. But this product is made to be mainly used stationary, therefore this fact should not be a big blocker.
Other than that the design of the front is clean and minimal. Just one small status LED in the front indicates power and ongoing read/write activity. The WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo is very silent compared to previous models (like the My Book Mirror) thanks to no active vents and a passive cooling system.
Another detail I just realized the moment I wanted to switch the hard-drive on, was the lack of a power switch. The hard-drive is on as soon as you plug the the power cord in. This is quite minimal and I believe the device uses only a small amount of electricity when sleeping, but I have to say that I finally do want to stay in control when the device should go to sleep or just not be available at all. If I do not need it I do not want the hard-drive to be on, which means I will have to unplug it. But this makes me feel a little bad, because it seems wrong to unplug a device just to ensure it’s off (one wonders if this has an effect on the performance of the hard-drives over time). I can imagine this to be a more useful feature on a more stationary machine like an iMac or MacPro.
Besides the two Thunderbolt ports the Thunderbolt Duo also features a possibility on the back to lock the device in place and protect it against theft.
As mentioned before the Thunderbolt Duo features two 3,5' hard-drives that allow usage in Raid1 and Raid0. What is very nice, is the opportunity to easily swap hard-drives in case one crashes. Just push on the top to release the top surface to get access to the hard-drives. No tools are needed for this action. This way it is quite easy to replace a broken hard-drive or upgrade to bigger ones after a certain time.
After playing around with the Thunderbolt Duo now for some days I am really enjoying its capacity, speed and clean appearance and integration into my overall setup.
