Used WD 12TB My Book Duo External Storage Array (2x 6TB)

2025-04-16T20:00:00

I received this product in place of another duo I had for 5 years. I wasn't able to restore my prior duo since the drives are no longer available. I upgraded to this duo only to find out it is faulty and makes vibration noises. As part of troubleshooting, my RAID 1 configuration got out of sync and then would no longer load. You can load each drive individually to access your data, but if you initialize one of the two healthy drives the WD Utility Software doesn't have an option to rebuild the RAID 1. There are no instructions on the internet to do this and WD tech support only defaults to telling you to restore the data somewhere else and then initialize a RAID 1 and then copy the data back. You'll notice if you just have one drive in that you'll see a rebuild button, but it isn't clickable and that disappears when you have two drives in. Basically RAID 1 is good for redundancy, but not for restoring RAID 1 when a drive fails. I don't trust WD at all with my data and wasn't comfortable sending my drives back to them for replacements. They haven't sufficiently defined what their hard drive handling policy is (with my data) and how they destroy the data. This drive also makes general read access noises that is annoying. Would *not* recommend.

Unhappy U.

Originally posted at

2025-02-03T19:00:00

This is an exceptional external drive, quick and reliable. I use this for all my storage instead of buying more drive space from Apple. This is affordable and easy to hook up.

WLE 1.

Originally posted at

2025-02-03T19:00:00

Plenty of space, quick. It has enough space for external media libraries, and extra room for other.

WLE 1.

Originally posted at

2025-01-11T19:00:00

Do not buy this product, be away from that , i bought 2 pair of this product , one of them shows raid issue and finally all data gone, the second one makes some delay on my music softwares and after took it away and bought a new other brand buy with good quality all problems solved, do not buy this trash

Farzinmusic

Originally posted at

2024-10-06T20:00:00

Had this setup work well with my intel mac and now it doesnt work properly with my new silicone mac. It does not mount when connected, I have to restart the computer with the drive connected to mount. After about 45min - 1hr of use it will suddenly disconnect and the fans go on full blast. All checks from the WD software say it's okay but I just cant depend on this drive. I've spent 3 days with WD tech support; I keep getting disconnected everytime my ticket is passed on to another tech and having to start over. Luckily I did not trust WD with the expensive, high-capacity storage but in the end 5TB of information is a LOT of data to lose access to.

KenJyi

Originally posted at

2024-08-22T20:00:00

I bought this device 6 months ago with the intent to store large amounts of data but yesterday, out of nowhere the device came up with a RAW file system and disk become inaccessible by the OS. I reached out to the WD Support and was told to obtain 3rd party data recovery software. While they told me a list and said the software is free, I had to pay extra $100 to obtain it as nothing is free these days. I was able to recover the data, but transfer them over to interim devices became a nightmare as I do not have another spare device of high capacity (which is why I bought MyBook in a first place). All in all - total expense of $600 and waste of time on data transfer. I did run a chkdsk and found bunch of bad blocks so I conclude this is very low quality product as it didn't even last a year before getting BBs. I am an owner and a user of Seagate attached NAS which is working over 7 years without a single glitch so would recommend to stay away from any RAID devices made by the WD. (Note that I do not speak for all devices as I haven't used other models, but I bought myBook which supports RAID so seeing it being unreliable makes it waster of money. ************ Verdict **************** Stay away unless you ready to spend extra on data recovery and/or messing around with restoring/transferring data. Also a note that I am still waiting on the WD support to offer solution/replacement for the broken device as in its current state its absolutely useless and its being less than 6 months!

AndyL

Originally posted at

2024-03-17T20:00:00

Every time i'm using it on a mac it stops and disappears, my mac can't detect it and i have to restart all several times. Also it makes weird noises. For the price not worth it at all.

Busy

Originally posted at

2024-02-20T19:00:00

I have two dead My Book Duos Holding precious data, I still hope one day to recover. Thought I was being sensible, having 2 copies of each disc, but this proved to be the worst decision of my (early) photography career. The case developed a fault, makings the discs unreadable. The discs themselves were operating fine With diagnostics, indicating no fault. I thought No problem, I'll just swap them into the casing that still works and retrieve my data. Didn't work. So I moved them to an old Mac Pro. That didn't work either. Why? WD's alleged 'Security' feature: hardware encryption. This genius idea prevents the discs from being read by any casing other than their original. I asked WD to help, but no help was forthcoming. The casing on the second unit failed shortly afterwards. WD insisted that this is a 'security feature' to prevent data being stolen. (Ie If a thief breaks in and takes the time to remove your disks from their casing, then ha ha, they won't be able to read them). I therefore lost both my data and the backup - because WD Does not provide a decryption key when their casings fail. You couldn't make it up. I never bought a WD product since.

Coznak

Originally posted at

2024-02-09T19:00:00

this is a good product. you must be-careful not to unplug this unexpectedly or you will get the orange flashing light. there are a few ways to fix this issue. one way is to power it off and unplug the unit. pull out one of the hard drives. replace it with an empty hard drive. then hook it back up and turn it back on. the unit should be flashing orange again but this time you can use your software to rebuild the raid array. a second way i was able to fix this unit was after powering off the unit. unhook the unit. swap the 2 hard disk drives around so the drive in the first slot is now in the second slot. put the unit back together and turn on the orange light will be flashing. the software should tell you it needs to rebuild the raid array this .your data is accessible at this time but it will show you it is rebuilding the array. for either option wehen the array is finished rebuilding the unit will now have the white light and will be back to normal. you will not loose any data. i prefer option 1. if you are storing files that you just cant afford to loose then buy an extra matching hard disk drive you will thank mea latter it will be worth the money. this is the best option for a direct attached storage that i have found.

Snickles

Originally posted at

2023-08-14T20:00:00

The main circuit board failed along with one of the two drives. Had it set to RAID 1 (Mirrored). WD tech support said nothing can be done except to buy a new enclosure and put the other working mirrored pair into the new enclosure. Since I purchased two of these units I was able to salvage the data from the working drive but will never buy again because of possibility of enclosure circuit board failure.

RALJ

Originally posted at

2023-07-17T20:00:00

So these units are not really that great...if the chassis fails then you are screwed, the hardware encryption is tied to the drives you can't swap in and out whatever drives you want and if the chassis fails you are screwed unless possibly still under warranty...super dissapointing...I went with a Mobius Pro 2C...much more reliable and no bs proprietary encryption....

Desslok40

Originally posted at

2023-04-19T20:00:00

The hard drives are okay and good value for money. However, on my M1 Mac they crash a lot. The drive utilities software is very bad and I have older My Book Duos im not using, because the cause errors all the time. Data feels less save due to these problems.

mi.ro

Originally posted at

2023-03-07T19:00:00

Western Digital hard drive backups Are designed to fail.

John M.

Originally posted at

2022-12-28T19:00:00

Great RAID drive. I have it configured as a RAID 1. This is my third WD RAID - all still in operation.

mmesgleski

Originally posted at

2022-08-09T20:00:00

Noisy. Sounds like it's going to crash any moment. USB C port not recognized by computer's C port.

RK P.

Originally posted at

2022-06-30T20:00:00

These drives have worked ok for me however periodically the fan will go into overdrive mode... it gets really, really loud. At the same time, it will lose it's connection to my PC. The only way to get it back is to unplug it and then plug it back in again. Not a huge show stopper but I've seen other reviews mention this and the same thing happens to me.

George869

Originally posted at

2022-06-08T20:00:00

excellant what i need for all my files with large capacity

tones

Originally posted at

2022-06-04T20:00:00

It does what it is suppose to, but makes this clunky sound every few minutes even when I am not accessing it. Seems like the drive/disk is continuously spinning, which gets very annoying as it sits on my desk. I probably access files on it once or twice a day, but the thing keeps going like it is being accessed all the time. Really annoying.

S S.

Originally posted at

2022-03-26T20:00:00

I have had nothing but trouble with this since I got it. On my Mac it constantly disconnects. Now the fan spools up like a turbo for no reason. It's strange because the regular my book drives work great. Avoid. Especially on OSX

tweet

Originally posted at

2022-01-03T19:00:00

Purchase simple, product easy to set up, decent price, love it.

Tom H.

Originally posted at

2021-12-26T19:00:00

I needed a lot of storage and WD delivers with its 36TB model. The drive is easy to setup and use. Data transfers are quick and reliable. I only detract a star because of the amount of noise and vibration it puts out when in use, but that is probably unavoidable with a spinning hard drive. I look forward to the day when they make a 36TB SSD at a similar price.

Ambro

Originally posted at

2021-11-15T19:00:00

The product was good, but dealing with the company was not.

Fred P.

Originally posted at

2021-10-17T20:00:00

easy setup and great performance - precisely what I was looking for

dr_danj

Originally posted at

2021-09-09T08:33:11

This storage device was one of the easiest installations we've ever done. The unit works great. The vendor delivered when they said, and the product arrived in excellent condition. Would definitely order again.

JOHN S.

2021-08-17T20:00:00

Two of my Units Disconnect All the Time and the fans go into overdrive. I have to unplug the unit for 5 mins and then put it back one. Do all the drive checks and it says it is OK!

CrankyXT

Originally posted at

2021-06-29T20:00:00

Look as grabman I accept nothing but the best. And when it came to backing up my 23tb ps4 collection I went straight to WD for quality and reliability. After EXTENDED usage I can proudly state that grabman gives 2 thumbs up to the WB 28TB My Book Duo!

grabman

Originally posted at

2019-03-26T12:31:17

It is easy to get up and running ,works well and costs little more than the two 6Tb WD Red drives that it contains. There is an issue with the product's plastic case that has no bearing on operation. The outer cardboard box was sealed and undamaged, so in no way is it Adorama's fault. It appears to me that the unit's case was probably damaged in assembly.

RANDALL W.

2018-04-29T14:25:01

A very important fact that was not in the WD literature is that there is a hardware encryption that prevents the drive from being read in any other enclosure. In my case the WD Duo enclosure went bad and while the drives were ok I had no way to read them. WD does not sell replacement enclosures. They also no longer have replacement drives for my unit. So if you are out of warranty, you are out of luck. WD’s solution to this problem is to provide you with a list of third party data recovery contractors. I contacted one of them and was told that the cost would range from $800 to $2,700 and that they would need the enclosure. If I had a working enclosure I wouldn’t need them. So without having backed up the WD Duo, I would have lost all my data. As it was I did loose the work than had been done since the last backup. I can think of no reason for WD employing hardware encryption other than to force you to buy the replacement drives from them for as long as they chose to sell them. This characteristic of the drive should be made clear in the WD literature so that people can make an informed I bought the older model of this WD Duo to run in a RAID 1 configuration. I used it to have a protected working/storage solution for my photography and fortunately backed it up with offsite storage. My thinking, based on the WD literature, was that if one of the drivers failed all I had to do was replace the bad drive and rebuild the RAID or I could even pull the good drive and put it in another enclosure. As it turned out, none of this was possible. decision in purchasing it.

ROBERT A.

2018-03-23T08:47:14

Spent hours trying to get a backup of my images I'm a photographer. Instructions are not clear. If your are a computer geek you probably won't have the difficulty I had. I finally got it working but back ups take long time. You have to make sure you turn off your computer sleep settings otherwise it will time out.

GEORGE F.

2017-02-25T08:00:28

I had no set-up problems, even for my iMac. Pretty easy for a non computer professional. It is working in the background with Time Machine without any additional effort keeping 2 copies of all my data.

Fred M.