WD 6TB My Book Thunderbolt Duo Dual-Drive Storage System

Reviews for WD 6TB My Book Thunderbolt Duo Dual-Drive Storage System

Customer Reviews and Ratings

3.5 out of 5 stars

Based on 13 reviews

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    WD Thunderbolt Duo RAID 1 Configuration Fail

    • Written by from Torrquay

    A previous reviewer identified that the problem was due to open files on the drive which causes a change of configuration to fail. The User Manual and the Utilites program are on the drive, so it is common for users to open these before making changs to the configuration.

    Not the neatest of solutions but his worked for me by presumably killing any open images on the external hard drive.

    1. Make sure that WD Drive Utilities has been installed.
    2. Close all open programs.
    3. Right Click Thunderbolt Duo Icon on Desktop - "Eject" drive.
    4. Disconnect power to drive, wait 30 secs, then reconnect power.
    5. Open WD Drive Utilities, selct drive and configure to RAID 1.

    WD Support were going to send a refurbished replacement as they could not identify what seems to be a common problem.

    1 of 1 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Works well so far

    • Written by from COCHRANE

    I got the same unable to config error message the first times I tried, but as a previous review noted, you need to eject the WD Drive Utilities disk image after installing the software before you try configuring the drive. Working well for me so far.

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Configuration Failed - run as Admin

    • Written by from Calgary

    To those that had this error trying to change to RAID 1. I had the same, but it worked fine when I ran it from my administrator account.

    Even though it asked for administrator password when run from my normal account, this did not work and I had to switch to an account with admin rights.

    Hope this helps!!

    1 of 2 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    mine failed too!

    • Written by from Cedarhurst

    I was debating getting this one or the Lacie thunderbolt 6gb raid and I bought the my book one because it was cheaper. big mistake! It failed right out of the box. I can't configure it to a raid 1 and the customer support is closed.

    1 of 5 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Failed out of the box

    • Written by from Knoxville

    Just received and the drive failed out of the box. As soon as I tried to mirror the drive "Configuration Failed" just as another reviewer stated above. I am planning on switching out for another drive - and I know it's not unheard of to get a bad drive. I've had a few seagates fail on me as well. Hopefully the replacement will work - after spending $600 and really needing this drive now I definitely am disappointed.

    3 of 8 people found this useful

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  • 2.0 out of 5 stars

    Not silent and has fan!

    • Written by from Reisterstown

    Please beware - these drives do have fan and its gets quite loud after long copy operations! The 40 mm fan is located on the front side and gets really annoying if you transfer large amounts of data.
    I was mislead by other WRONG reviews who mention that drives are fanless and I am really disappointed now.;(

    8 of 13 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Good but not great

    • Written by from Temple Terrace

    Bought this as a time machine back up drive - it's "green" drives were a plus.
    To like - reasonable price, three options to configure, good reviews
    To not like - not very "green" - runs fairly warm and doesn't spin down, no on/off switch. Have to power down by pulling the plug
    In the middle of the pack- quiet but not silent

    39 of 43 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Great Product, and even better with some additional partitioning.

    • Written by from Parkville

    I am an audio engineer who uses Pro Tools for my DAW, and I demand speed and rigor with all of my computer products. The drive performs fantastically. My data is accessed fast and seamlessly. With the WD Utilities included you are limited to RAID 0 with 6TB, RAID 1 with 3TB, or two individual drives with no RAID present. Using disk utility, I partitioned each drive into two 1.5TB sections. I then formed two RAID 0 disk images. By doing this, you can have much greater performance in two disk images. Overall great product. With the partitioning method above, this drive is extremely useful for people interested is having external storage and Time Machine capabilities in one drive. Thank you Western Digital!

    40 of 42 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Perfect for high volume backup

    • Written by from Santa Clara

    I purchased this drive primarily to do backups for my two Promise Pegasus RAID arrays. I do video production and photography and needed a high capacity backup solution. I set these drives up as mirrored pairs so I can have one backup drive on-site and a second backup drive for off-site storage, backing up 3TB of data at a time. I have four paired sets of drives for a total of 12 TB of on-site / off-site backup, and this solution has worked fast and flawlessly for me thus far. I've already recommended this product to two friends in the photography and video business as a reliable, high-capacity backup storage solution. Swapping the hard drives is a breeze and I would highly recommended the My Book Thunderbolt Duo to anyone.

    29 of 29 people found this useful

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  • 4.0 out of 5 stars

    Reply to "Zero Stars" review with fix

    • Written by from North Hollywood

    I don't know if you figured this out or not, but I had the same problem. The reason was that the WD Configuration tools installer was still mounted as an image.
    Eject the installer, then configure again. It works fine.

    It is absolutely silent, has better speeds than my internal HD, or any Firewire on the market, and is relatively inexpensive. The configuration tool is refreshingly simple.

    This is a good balance between value and performance, and I feel it can sit behind my iMac happily spinning away without screaming for attention with it's big Blue eye (ahem, Lacie).

    23 of 23 people found this useful

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  • 1.0 out of 5 stars

    Can you do zero stars? why not?

    • Written by from Marina del Rey

    1 - Brand new product comes in the mail... just ordered it a few days ago.
    2 - Take it out of package
    3 - Follow the 4 steps to plug it in
    4 - installed software
    5 - followed steps to set it as Mirror RAID 1
    6 - system returned: CONFIGURATION OF THE DRIVE HAS FAILED.
    CREATION OF THE MIRROR SET HAS FAILED

    7 - you do the FAIL math

    22 of 61 people found this useful

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  • 5.0 out of 5 stars

    Love This Drive

    • Written by from Hopkins

    Some My Book Thunderbolt reviews have focused on how the Cavier Green drives make this one of the slowest Thunderbolt storage solutions. Yet it is way faster than non Thunderbolt drives, even USB 3.0. I have the 6TB MyBook Thunderbolt set to RAID1 mirroring. I got so tired over the years of having hard drives die, this is the perfect solution for backing up precious content. I also stream audio and video media to iTunes from the drive without issue. When one of it's two 3 TB drives eventually goes bad in my RAID1 configuration, the included software will report it, while you still have a completely functional drive running off the remaining good drive. Replacing the bad drive with another Cavier Green drive is a snap, literally, right from the top. Gone are the days of of data loss worries. It's a very quiet drive as there is no fan. Cavier Green drives are very efficient, quiet and heat wafts up through the top grill. You can run it as one 6TB RAID0, or a 3TB RAID1 mirror, or 2 independent 3TB drives (JBOB). am very happy with this drive and highly recommend it. Good price for what you get.

    75 of 79 people found this useful

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  • 3.0 out of 5 stars

    Quiet. Hope Speed Was Consistent In Writing. Plastic Enclosure!

    • Written by from JACKSON HEIGHTS

    I just got it today. At 6:00PM I connected it to the Time Machine. My entire computer has to be backed up totaling 129.44GB. I'm using iMac 3.4GHz i7 with 16GB Ram and 256SSD having 6MB L3C. Now, it's 7:22PM. 1hr and 22min passed. And Time Machine has backed up 96.53GB of 129.44GB so far. Now you do the maths here.

    I gave it 3 stars because of it's plastic construction and write speed fluctuation so inconstant to realize that it's a thunderbolt drive.

    I like that it's quiet. I like that it's just warm even after over an hour continuous backup of such a huge data transfer. But I hate the plastic casing. I hate the huge power adapter. WD wake up.

    36 of 54 people found this useful

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