Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo Review

The Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo (8TB) is retailing for S$1,199 which is pretty expensive for a external hard drive.

It comes with dual Thunderbolt ports that allows you to daisy-chain up to six My Book Thunderbolt Duo drives (48 TB using six Thunderbolt Duo 8 TB drives) or other devices such as monitors, media players, and video / audio editors.

Thunderbolt offers a theoretical speed of 10Gbps as compared to 5Gbps on the USB 3.0.

The My Book Thunderbolt Duo comes in 3 sizes, 4TB (S$749), 6TB (S$899) and 8TB (S$1,199). The one I gotten for this review is the 8TB model. It measures 165mm x 157mm x 99mm (Height X Depth x Width) and weighs 2.3kg.

Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo - Box Front — Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo – Box Front

Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo - Box Back — Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo – Box Back

Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo - Box Contents — Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo – Box Contents

One Thunderbolt cable is included with the package.

Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo - Font View — Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo – Font View

Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo - Back View — Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo – Back View

Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo - Besides My iMac (Late 2012) — Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo – Besides My iMac (Late 2012)

User Replaceable Hard Drives
One of the nice features that I like about the My Book Thunderbolt Duo is that the hard drives are user-replaceable. You do not even need a screwdriver to remove the hard drives as shown in the series of pictures below.

User Replaceable Hard Drives - Step 1: Push To Open The Cover — User Replaceable Hard Drives – Step 1: Push To Open The Cover

User Replaceable Hard Drives - Step 2: Unscrew The Ring Screw — User Replaceable Hard Drives – Step 2: Unscrew The Ring Screw

User Replaceable Hard Drives - Step 3: Pull Out The Black Flap — User Replaceable Hard Drives – Step 3: Pull Out The Black Flap

User Replaceable Hard Drives - Step 4: Remove The HDD — User Replaceable Hard Drives – Step 4: Remove The HDD

Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo - HDD Removed — Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo – HDD Removed

I know that Western Digital owns Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, but I am still wondering why they do not use their own HDD, like WD Black or WD Blue in the My Book Thunderbolt Duo.

Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo - Hitachi HDD — Western Digital My Book Thunderbolt Duo – Hitachi HDD

Performance
My 27″ iMac (Late 2012) is on a 3TB fusion drive and it gets about 249MB/s on write and 276MB/s on read.

My 13″ MacBook Air (Mid 2011) on a 256GB SSD gets about 247MB/s on both read and write.

My Book Thunderbolt Duo on RAID 0 gets about 231MB/s on write and 227MB/s on read, and on RAID 1, it gets halved to 123MB/s on both read and write.

My Book Thunderbolt Duo RAID 0 Disk Speed Test

My Book Thunderbolt Duo RAID 1 Disk Speed Test

WD Drive Utilities
You can download the WD Drive Utilities (the .dmg is also included in My Book Thunderbolt Duo) to manage your My Book Thunderbolt Duo.

It allows you to check your My Book Thunderbolt Duo’s drive status, wipes your drive, perform diagnostics, and change your drive RAID type. By default out of the box is RAID 0 (Stripe).

WD Driver Utilities - Drive Status — WD Driver Utilities – Drive Status

WD Driver Utilities - Change To RAID 1 — WD Driver Utilities – Change To RAID 1

WD Disk Utilities - Drive Erase — WD Disk Utilities – Drive Erase

WD Driver Utilities - Diagnostics — WD Driver Utilities – Diagnostics

Summary
The My Book Thunderbolt Duo is a review unit ~~that I have to return, I wish they let me keep it~~ because I can see myself using it. It sits nicely beside my iMac and compliments the design of it. Using Thunderbolt, it is faster than USB 3 and does not waste one USB port.