Western Digital WD MyBook Thunderbolt Dual External Hard Drive Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,645 words · ~8 min read
0:07
Welcome to my unboxing of a pretty cool product. This is the WD MyBook
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Thunderbolt Duo. And what makes it duo
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is the fact that Oh man. Okay, give me a
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sec. And we got the plastic off, which is great. Okay, so what makes this a duo
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hard drive is that it is a dual drive storage system. Okay, peak performance
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for creative professionals. More on how to achieve that in just a moment. This
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is a 4 TBTE total capacity unit, although it's available in a variety of
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configurations. Uses Thunderbolt technology, although the cables sold
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separately and works with Mac OSX Time Machine. And now that we have
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Thunderbolt on the PC, it'll also work with whatever PC technologies you want
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to use it with as well. So, it's not just just a Mac product, you guys. This
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is very much a PC product, too. So,
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don't hit that dislike button just
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yet. All right, let's see what else Western Digital has to say for
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themselves before we get too much further into this. So, we'll cover that
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later. Threeyear warranty on this guy. Uh, there's the front in real size. Oh,
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is that really actual size? Hold on. Let's see. Let's see how actual size
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they've gotten it because it doesn't look quite right to me. Hold on. Hold
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on. I do like it when on the outside of the box they do like an actual size
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thing. Is it right? Let's see. See if
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the height's right. Yeah. H It's almost
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almost. It's very very close. So, that's what the unit looks like. Um on this
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side, you see Okay, we'll show you all the ports on the back later. Uh user
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blah blah blah blah blah. Okay. Yeah. Let's go. So, let's have a look at the
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included accessories. Power adapter. Remember, no
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Thunderbolt cable included. Those they're still really, really expensive.
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So, it's up to the user to source a Thunderbolt cable. They show you how to plug in a Thunderbolt cable.
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Thunderbolt's plug-andplay, so as long as your computer's set up for it, you
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should be fine. Um, all
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right. Why would you need one of
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these? Very simple answer. And the
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simple answer is that you need extremely
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high-speed or very reliable and
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high-speed external storage. So, the two drives in here can be configured either
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as JBO or as JBO, which is just a bunch
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of discs. So you'll have four four terabytes of nonbacked up and
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nonacelerated storage or as RAID zero
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for high performance. However, if one of
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the drives inside were to fail, you would lose all of the data on it. So
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you'd want to make sure you're also doing like a nightly backup or something
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of your of your working drive because then you'd be using it as more like a
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high performance external drive off of your laptop that you use for video or
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rendering or photo editing or something like that. Okay? So you can use it for
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high performance or the third option is you can configure it in RAID one which
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will give you the performance of a single drive and the capacity of a
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single drive. So you'll be down to two terabytes of capacity. However, you will
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have complete redundancy between those two drives. So if one drive just fails
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outright, you know, you drop the Thunderbolt Duo off your desk and one of
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the drives doesn't work anymore. You're still okay. All your
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data will be there. So JBO which gives you 4 gigs normal speed and if one drive
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dies only the data on it is lost the other data is fine. So there's that.
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Then there's RAID zero which is high performance 4 TB of capacity but
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increased risk of data loss. And then there's RAID one which gives you single
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drive performance and perfect data recovery in the event of a hardware
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failure. So the unit itself is pretty pretty plain. You got your activity LED,
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your WD logo. Pretty plain on this side. Don't worry, these aren't these marks
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aren't real. These are just bits of packaging. Uh, pretty plain on this side
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as well. On the back, you find the business end. This is where we've got
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two Thunderbolt ports, so you can use it as a pass through if you have multiple
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storage devices or if you have other Thunderbolt devices. Remember, there's
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not much now, but more is coming. Or if you have a DisplayPort display that you
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want to pass through to, that's why it has two for the daisy chaining
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functionality of Thunderbolt. We've also got our power in. And here is a really,
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really cool feature about this. Now, most external drives are not user
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serviceable. This one, ah, there we go.
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Is. So, all you got to do is pop the
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top. And I'm learning this in real time. I have done no preparation on how to uh
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how to swap out a drive. Simply open the
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case and exchange the existing drive. No tools needed. Look at that. Okay. So,
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there's a little ventilated uh piece there. So, actually, let's have a look
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at the ventilation. So, you got vent holes at the bottom. Vent holes. No, no
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vent holes at the back. So, they're relying on natural convection. Rubber
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feet here to get keep it a little bit off the table. Cold air will come in
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here, rise, and then go out of the top
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of the unit. Great. Okay. So, how are
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these uh Oh, okay. I think I get
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it. And there we go. WD Caviar green
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drives. It recommends to use WD green
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power drives only. Um, that might be a
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power restriction. It might be
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um a quiet restriction. I mean, you don't want something sitting on your
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desk to have really, really loud sleep times if you're using it all the time if it's sitting right next to your head.
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For whatever reason, Western Digital recommends using green drives in here.
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So, it's that simple. All you got to do is take out these screws. One, two. Take
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this piece and put it on the screw when you put it into the new drive as well,
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so that you'll actually be able to remove the new drive. and you could Oh,
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that's that's cool. So, they're not locking you into this external storage
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unit. They're actually giving you the option to go, oh, well, two two TB
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drives isn't enough for me anymore, and now there are 6 TBTE, you know, green
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drives. I can just buy a couple of those, throw them in there, and then I'm
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ready to have a way, way bigger external
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Thunderbolt storage solution because Thunderbolt is a standard that's going to matter for a long time now. and
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you're getting a much better value with a product like this if you're going to be able to keep using it over an
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extended period of time. So, that's actually very very big of them to go
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ahead and do that. So, I'm just trying to uh get this back in at some point
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here. You know what? I'm not going to stress about it too much, but I think I got it now. Let's have a Yeah, there's a
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cat. Thank you, Slick, for contributing that to the uh to the video today. There
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we go. I got it. So, let's see if there's anything else that we're missing here. Right. So, extra performance with
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RAID zero. Raid one mirrored. Do more work in less time. Right. Why would you
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want a Thunderbolt external drive? I mean, I covered this very briefly
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before, but might as well. Yeah. Yeah,
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it's fast. Okay, there's that. Thank you for that contribution. Thunderbolt is up to 10 Gbit per second, although until
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hard drives get a fair bit faster. Even with RAID zero, we're not going to max
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that out. We're going to need like Uber drives. Um, this is for professionals.
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This is for notebook users. If your notebook has Thunderbolt, then you can
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use this for huge mass storage on your desk that you can quickly and easily
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plug in. So, you plug in one cable, boom, your desktop monitor's on, your uh
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your storage is connected, and you don't have to sort of fumble around with a
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bunch of different cables. So, there's that. And then usage scenario number two
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is you need high performance, reliable external storage for a desktop PC that
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you're using for professional use. A lot of the time, it can be more convenient
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to use an external external storage device rather than throwing drives in
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and out of your your actual computer tower all the time. I mean, if you have
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a custom computer, it might not be as hard, but a lot of OEM computers, it's a
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real hassle to fuss around with hard drives, and this is comparatively very,
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very easy. So, thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the
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Maybook Thunderbolt Duo. I will be doing a follow-up video on this one where we
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have a look at performance over Thunderbolt with this particular device
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in a few different configurations. So, stay tuned for that on the NCIXCOM
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channel. And don't forget to subscribe to Lionus Tech Tips.