WD My Book Duo 20TB Review

TweakTown's Rating: 90%

The Bottom Line

WD has a truly great product with the My Book Duo. It offers solid performance and compatibility with all cables needed for legacy and modern connectivity included, and the price point is the best you will find for two 10TB drives.

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As higher and higher capacity drives are released into the market, we slowly see the latest trickle down into enclosures. The My Book lineup is no stranger to this process as in the past it has taken advantage of the entire WD product lineup.

With this latest iteration of the My Book Duo, WD has moved this platform over to USB-C connectivity while increasing capacity with the use of their new 10TB WD Red drives. From the factory, the Duo is RAID 0 ready, but does support RAID 1 and includes a host of software including WD Backup and WD Security for hardware-based 256-bit encryption.

Compatibility includes Windows 7+ out of the box while other operating systems will require a reformat. The MSRP of the 20TB My Book Duo is $799.99 with a three-year warranty.

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With the packaging we find an image of the My Book centered. Capacity is listed among the warranty and software at the bottom left.

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On the back we find marketing at the top and box contents at the bottom left.

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Included with the My Book is a USB-C cable, C to A cable, and power adapter. We also have reading materials and spudger for removing the internal drives.

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WD is using their new half and half design for the latest My Book. At the top, we have glossy black, and the bottom is a textured black plastic.

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On the backside, we have the I/O with dual USB 3.0 for connecting additional storage. Below this, we have the USB-C port and power input.

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Opening the enclosure, we have the drives.

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As listed on the front of the box, the My Book Duo uses WD Red 10TB drives.

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WD Drive utilities gives us a look at the drive status at the top and a set of drive tests below.

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Over on the RAID management tab, you have access to array configuration which includes RAID 0 and 1. You can also choose between NTFS and exFAT file systems.

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The last piece of software is WD Backup that comes with most My Book and My Passport solutions. The software guides you through the process of backing up your data to the drive or additionally through Dropbox.

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At the top we have a usable capacity of 18628 GB and diving right into testing the My Book Duo in RAID 0 reached 294 MB/s read and 256 MB/s write at QD1 that increased to 362 MB/s read and 342 MB/s write at QD32.

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RAID 1 gives us a capacity of 9314 GB and performance reaching 211 MB/s read and 214 MB/s write. This stayed the same at QD32.

The My Book Duo has seen some changes over the years and while this new design isn't my cup of tea, I do like that WD has used it across all their external products. Build quality seems sturdy enough for a desktop enclosure although the glossy black is guaranteed to be a dust magnet.

Performance is on par with expectations for two drives in RAID. We were able to reach a peak of 362 MB/s read and 342 MB/s write at QD32 and moving over to RAID 1 we see 211 MB/s read and 214 MB/ s write.

Adding to this, we have a solid set of software that includes WD Security and Backup giving consumers the ability to encrypt their data and have scheduled backups all in a few steps.

In closing, the My Book Duo is a unique offering with its 20TB of capacity over two 10TB WD Red drives. With this solution, you aren't locked into any platform, as the drives are removable, allowing this solution be used as an entry-level point of launch where you can expand later into a full-fledged NAS or larger 4 to 6 bay RAID platform taking these drives with you.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Maximus IX Hero (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: Intel Core i7 7700K (buy from Amazon) / (Read our Review)
• Memory: G.SKILL TridentZ DDR4 3200 (buy from Amazon)
• Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Hybrid (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Intel 730 480GB SSD (buy from Amazon) / (Read our Review)
• Secondary Storage: MyDigitalSSD BP5 512GB SSD (buy from Amazon)
• Case: EVGA DG-86 (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 P2 (buy from Amazon)
• Networking: ASUS PCE-AC88 AC3100 (buy from Amazon)
• Networking: ASUS ROG 10G Express
• Networking: ASUS Thunderbolt EX3 (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)