WD Black² Dual Drive
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
888 words · ~4 min read
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Hotspot Shield service makes your internet browsing safer more secure and
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fully private click now to learn more welcome to my unboxing and overview of
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an extremely exciting product this is the WD black squared dual Drive which is
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to say that when you open up the package there is two drives inside and I'll show
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you guys this check this out we got uh we got inside okay well there there's a
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USB drive and then if you dig under the quick install guide which is in about
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one bajillion languages and the technical support and limited warranty
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which is a 5year warranty because this is a black series dual drive you find
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another drive so there it is a USB drive and a hard drive the black Square no
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that's not what it is at all okay I'm sorry you guys this is just the software
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that you need to take advantage of Western digital's first consumer grade
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hybrid drive but when they call it a dual drive it's a little bit different
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from the kinds of hybrids that we're normally used to this is a 9 1 12 mm
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form factor so double check your notebook to make sure it works it
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doesn't go down to 7 mm like many ssds and even high-capacity hard drives do
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these days but there's a reason for that it has both a 1 tbte 5400 RPM notebook
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drive inside and a
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120 gig SSD okay lonus but this isn't
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the first time we've seen a hard drive and an SSD jammed into a 2 and 1/2 in
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enclosure the first time we saw it was actually about 3 years ago with the
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Seagate momentus XT so this is basically the same right the answer is no the
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momentus XT uses a regular notebook hard
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drive just like this one does and it uses a 4 gig for the original or 8 gig
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SSD as a cash so that is to say that you
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never actually see it it's working in the background accelerating applications
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bringing that hard drives performance closer to SSD but not quite to the same
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level as an SSD the black squared uses a very different implementation so it
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actually takes a dedicated 120 g SSD and
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lets you throw your operating system and your key games and applications on it
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for lightning fast pure SSD performance
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which isn't to say that it's the fastest SSD on the market or anything like that
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but it is Light Years faster than a mechanical hard drive especially if
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you're coming from a hard drive you go to SSD you're like what holy crap they're fast anyway so it's an actual
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dedicated SSD then it has a completely separate one tbte hard drive that you
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can use as a dedicated storage drive so it actually shows up to your system as a
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c and d Drive that you will manage separately and there's a little
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application that you install off this clever USB drive in order to get all of
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that working so okay lonus I don't know
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if that's the kind of thing that my mom would find as userfriendly as this drive
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where you just plug in the one drive and it shows up as one drive and it's all works in the background and I think WD
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knows that because look at The Branding on it it's black it's intended for
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enthusiasts it's intended for the folks who are able to see the value of having
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two specialized Solutions installed in their computer within one enclosure that
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are each good for a different thing so that is the SSD for small storage but
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fast and the hard drive for large storage but not nearly as fast and who
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is it actually for among the enthusiasts well I would say the notebook guys
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someone who has a notebook that only has a single 2 and 1/2 in Bay please bear in
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mind guys it is a 9 1 12 mm drive so you're not going to be installing this
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in every single notebook out there double check with your manufacturer for
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compatibility but if you have a single 2 and 1/2 in Bay and you want the best of
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both worlds without having to deal with carrying around additional external
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drives that my friends is who this is for thank you for checking out this
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unboxing and overview of the WD black squared dual drive now we understand the
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name of it don't forget to subscribe to L's techtips more unboxings reviews and
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other computer videos it's been a while since we've done this but yeah I forgot
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something there's also a USB transfer cable included so that's USB 3 which is
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Handy nice and fast and it's also included in the quick start guide how to
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back up your old system to your new black square drive and be pretty much
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ready to rock pretty quickly there so there you go SATA in there and then USB
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3 there and I love this auxiliary power right
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there
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yeah