Western Digital WD 44TB My Book DuoDesktop RAID External Hard Drive USB 3.2 Gen 1

I'm quite impressed with this harddrive unit. At first I had to format it to get widows to recognise the harddrives. Even though it states that it's ready from work the box to use. There was also a big issue with the fan blowing it's head off which was very loud. It was only later I discovered the there's is a clear plastic wrapping around the fan area which has to be removed. I've got poor eye sight so this doesn't help me. Once all the flaws where resolved it worked a like a charm. The harddrives do go into sleep mode and does take a while to wake up. But upon reading the reviews from the website this is normal to save wearing the harddrives out. Also there's a constant ticking noise which again is normal. Transfer speeds vary. But it serves its job for reliability and performance. Would I buy again. Yes it's ticked everything I was expecting.

So far I have bought 12 of these WD My Book Duo drives (The 24TB capacity model). I have 3 NAS servers at home, one of which is a media server, another is used to backup the media server and the third is my main network server for all my data.I had previously purchased WD Red 6TB drives to populate the servers and as time has gone on, the drives have started to get quite full (Each server takes 6 disks in a RAID 5 config, meaning that each server had around 27TB of storage space available).I had been looking to upgrade the servers to a higher storage capacity, but reader, as you know, buying hard drives is very expensive and for some bizarre reason, prices can fluctuate by around +/- £100 in a day on Amazon, which makes no sense whatsoever.I found out about "shucking" drives which is an ok way of getting drives of a higher capacity at a cheaper cost to go inside servers, but they can have issues with one of the pins needing to be covered so that the drive will power up. I don't know if my servers would have that issue - and as the drives in the servers are in a RAID config, I didn't want to run the risk of losing all my data.I then saw these WD My Book Duo drives that come with WD Red drives inside them. I downloaded the manual to see if the drives can be easily removed - and it said in the manual that Western Digital provide a plastic tool for popping the drive box open so that the individual drives can be removed. So, I took the plunge and bought 3 of these so that I would have a total of 6 x 12tb WD Red drives. On the day that I placed the order, they were down in price - and if you put these in your "wish list" you can monitor on a daily basis how frequently the prices change. I bought them on a day when they had dropped in price by approximately £100.So, thanks to Prime, the My Book Duo's arrived the next day and I set about removing the disks from their cases. This was a bit fiddly at first, but once I got the first drive out of it's plastic holder, the rest were easy. I downloaded WD's own drive diagnostics program from the WD website as I wanted to make sure the drives were all ok and had no bad sectors. I have a external hard drive enclosure that I connected each drive up to in turn and ran the extended diagnostic test that checks every single sector of the drives. This takes around 18-20 hours per drive, but my data is important, so I was happy to take the tests slowly. All 6 drives passed the tests and I was then able to put them in the NAS.While the diagnostics were running, I used that time to backup the main media server NAS to it's backup server, just to be on the safe side and then when all 6 drives had been thoroughly tested, I set about putting them in the media server. I won't bore you with that process as it's irrelevant to the review, however, it worked ok and at the end of it, I had around 55TB of usable space on the media server.Once that server was completed, next time that Amazon reduced the price of the My Book Duo's again, I purchasd more for the rest of the servers.And, best of all, as I had previously used 6TB WD Red drives on my servers, once each disk had been removed and partitions deleted, I was able to put 2 6TB drives inside each My Book Duo so that I have additional backup storage available for all my other data.So - if you plan on shucking the drives to increase capacity in a server, these are the best way of buying WD Red drives. If you plan on just using the drives as they are, inside the My Book Duo enclosure, then again, these are the best way of buying WD Red drives. WD Red's are the best drives for use on servers and I also find them to be the best to use for backups.

When my NAS volume went "read only'' upon resizing storage pool (could be a software bug, could be just me, doing something dumb and unnescessary), I decided it's time to scap RAID5 and go RAID10 - as I had no means to do a backup of full RAID5 capacity anyway (remembering that RAID is not a backup... and losing 60tb of personal data would hurt a lot). I figured it'd be easier to just have one unified backup - than to salvage my current 18tb of photos and videos with my small collection of 5tb and 2tb external backup drives.36TB was within best price/performance bracket, as of March 2024. Anything less would not cover my NAS capacity in RAID10, and the 44TB version (which I would have prefered) was unreasonable 300 GBP more.Design & noise: I like the discreete black box design. But I wouldn't want it on my desk due to noise - same as my NAS. That's why they both live in a corridor's shoe racking... 3.5'' spinners are noisy, and this is no exception. I also wish there was a simple external button to disable the blinking white LED (I think design-wise it looks fine, however...) - I have LED's disabled on my NAS and Wi-fi router, but I can't do it on this one (maybe through wd software?). With everything enabled, it'd look like a Christmas tree down there, and I don't want it.Speed & reliability: As I'm writing this, my NAS is pulling out - 7 TB, 500 item - chunk of backup with sustained speed of 90-100 MB/s. There are random bursts of 200+ MB/s, followed by dips to 86 MB/S, but 90-100 MB/s is an average. Highest I've seen is 310+ MB/s - but that's isolated file/start of copy (which is a good speed for 3.5'' dinosaurs, imo.). I'm sure there's plenty reviews and benchmarks with speeds out there (that I haven't bothered to check) but this is what I get. I have it connected with the default USB-C-to-A cable provided - in out of box configuration. The NAS in question is TS-464 in RAID10, loaded with 4x WD gold drives, and I have it attached to one of the usb 3.2 gen 2 spec ports (orange one, at the back). Sustained speed is a bit underwhelming, but not unexpected - especially with data integrity check enabled. Thankfully, I'm not in a hurry, and I am more concerned about reliability. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on that, after just a few days of usage. It absorbed 18 TB backup without a hickup (though it took days...). I'm hoping, that restore will be the same. From there, only time will tell.Final thoughts: I see this as a good BULK BACKUP storage unit.I wouldn't trust it with 36 TB of non-backup data, as it is - in RAID 0 configuration. Marketing says "Free up valuable space on all your computers. Store and back up your photo, video, and music collections, and important documents in one reliable place". Not a good idea, imo. Even if the drives are reliable, failures do happen, and losing so much data would be terrible. More reasonable option for non-essential single copy storage would be RAID 1, but then you're looking at rather slow (in the age of nvme's), rather noisy, and feature-plain storage unit, with annoying white LED, and a price tag of 600+ GBP for 18 TB. In that case, I think even just two bay NAS makes more sense, even if it's a few hundred GBP more.But as a simple, user-friendly connect-and-backup solution, this is a good value.

Don't buy this! I have 3 of them (2x 28TB, 1x 36TB) because I need the storage space, but I've experienced multiple issues.To start with the drives are super loud to the point where it's not nice being in the same room as even one of them (even 5 meters away). However, the big problem is that the fans in them seem to stop running randomly for some reason, and then the drives overheat to the point where is smells like something is burning, and then I get a blinking orange light and the drives don't showup in Windows anymore.My big problem now is how do I get so much data off of them before they stop working all together?!Save yourself the hassle, and just don't buy this.