WD 44TB My Book Duo Desktop RAID External Hard Drive HDD, USB 3.1, With Password Protection and Auto Backup Software - WDBFBE0440JBK-NESN

When I first got it, it seemed ok. And then I started getting constant "RAID Configuration Error" alerts, and have to disconnect and reconnect all the time. After several years of this... I finally followed the number one suggestion which was use a shorter USB cable. I had it in a rack on a 12 foot cable and was in denial about that being the problem. FINALLY relocated it next to the computer with a 2 foot cable and now it works just like a modern hard drive should. No longer shaking my tiny fist at the beige ceiling.

I had been put off WD drives since my old (WD Elements desktop drive) had just one day (in 2014 sometime after about an year or so of reliable usage) become dead without any known reason (no physical damage ever, never moved from desktop) and I hadn't been able to recover any of my 3tb data (years of work). This experience obviously caused me an aversion for WD drives but I learnt to always have a total backup of my main drive/data and for the last 4 or so years I have been using a 10tb Seagate (desktop hub) with 02 5tb desktop Seagates as the total backups. Evidently I do my backups manually (it's not rocket science requiring clunky software, rather a sequential style drag/drop/copy/paste task) and while it is admittedly a mundane and repetitive exercise the minor PTSD like experience from my first WD experience mentioned in the first sentence will not allow me to rely on anything else to ensure data storage safety (my data isn't secret or even valuable, just digital memories, movies, tv shows and pc games/software etc...but important to me because I like to be a library of sorts where I dislike deleting things to free up space because offline data access is always a good thing if ever faced with connectivity issues). Am not a techie but I appreciate data safety and after about 7 or 8 weeks of research (online duh..que Billie's bad guy) I decided to part ways with some of my hard earned savings and dive back into the promises by Western Digital. It's not cheap (I live in beautiful Fiji) to buy things on Amazon as shipping/import costs add on to the overall purchase price (while our FJ dollar is relatively an underdog vis-a-vis the US dollar) so took the plunge (despite my earlier 10tb Seagate first arriving DOA, costing my an extra FJ$200 to ship it back for a "free" replacement...not free to the consumer but Seagate is worth it IMHO). This one cost me US$905.83 (so you can understand that in FJ$ it translates to FJ$1,830 or thereabouts, but under FJ$2K factoring in credit card charges as well). No am not rich, but needed another drive as my 10tb main has about 700gb free space left (since I don't delete anything). First of all, delivery and packaging - very nice (vocalize like Borat but am sincere). Amazon had those air space bags in the outer box so that was nice and the DHL service is very nice and reliable so got this drive today (2 weeks earlier than expected). Then the big test...was it DOA...nope, works well and straight out of the box as it should and drive passed the WD diagnostic tests (using the RAID 0 default). Contains 02 10tb WD Red drives which are nice. Casing is relatively okay, plastic but should be fine (it is a desktop drive after all and will remain on the desktop). Usable space is 18.1 TB (this is expected/normal for anyone who knows basic computing). Cables are nice with USB C to USB 3 and USB C to USB C with power adapter and cable. Have transferred about 100gb of data to the WD MyBook Duo from my 10tb Seagate and speeds, while not consistent (given large volumes of small files pdf, doc, ppt, xls etc) are relatively fast (using USB C to USB C but obviously other/host drive is USB 3). The MyBook Duo runs relatively quietly (no audible irritation) and there are obvious decibel increases when the drive is under stress but this is not an issue if you understand how mechanical hard drives work. While this review is arguably premature I am happy with my purchase for now and I have placed my trust in WD products again because my research shows that while its products may face issues at times, it appears WD cares about the consumers. I remain on my guard however because now my main 10tb, together with my 02 05tb Seagates (total 20tb) will be the data backup of this 20tb WD. Would I buy this again? That depends on how well this one lasts (and honestly, it should last my remaining lifetime given my usage habits but lets see, if it doesn't last, nope if it does, yes, because I don't delete anything and more storage is often a need for me). So for this product, for now, 03 out of 03 for the product itself and 02 out of 02 for the Amazon service and DHL delivery. Vinaka from Fiji.

The big problem is not JUST that the unit failed completely after three months (it just cold boots, no lights, no connection to any computer), it's that your data is encrypted so that you can't just pull the drive and get your stuff. This is a requirement of their RAID software, you can't turn it off. So ... you'll probably do what I did, request a replacement. If you have ANY DATA on those drives that you'd like to recover, you'll need to do an "Advanced" RMA (replacement request), because they require you to send the old drive back FIRST with a "normal" replacement. Understandable, I guess. But an Advanced RMA costs $25, and they place a hold on your credit card for the cost of the drive until you return the old one. Oh, and you pay for shipping! So at the very least, you're out about $35 (and if you're like me, quite a bit of productivity) just to get a replacement which you'll hopefully be able to swap the hopefully still functional drives into. (And if you're like me, your credit card will trigger a fraud warning when they go to place the hold, placing the RMA into a kind of limbo ... but luckily everything is "fine", the guy at WD just told me to "try again tomorrow". My expectations are sky high obvi.) To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement. This product is a disaster. And the idea that many people like me are using it as a Raid 1 because they want their data to be mirrored all the time (likely due to our previous painful experiences with failed harddrives) ... I mean ... More fool us. Why, why do I keep buying WD drives?! Buyer be very wary of this product. If / when it fails you're in for a real headache. March 2022 Edit: After going through the arduous return process, WD sent me a replacement unit and I was able to swap the drives into it. All of the files were fine and intact, so I sent the "old" unit back. TWO MONTHS LATER, THE REPLACEMENT UNIT IS 100% BRICKED AS WELL. It has BARELY been used (seeing as I don't trust it at all). I'm so livid with WD. I will not go through the return process again but will count this as a very expensive loss and lesson never to touch Wester Digital products.

OK I have filled up a couple ( actually a lot) of lesser drives with 8 TB of digital babble so this was a logical next step. I thought about mirroring it because its technically elegant but then I got only enough for the 8 TB and I will accrue a lot more in the normal course of digital life. So far so good, has about 6 TB loaded. Has a 2 port USB hub built in so its easy to drain the life out of the smaller drives into this monolith. Thereupon it will live on the floor and just copy files as they are created and changed and occasionally tapped to provide a file from the forgotten past. Yes I worry about the drives going bad but so far honestly I have had 2 SSDs go bad and lose my data and one spinning drive in 35 years of bit banging. and I put the bad spinner in the freezer and got all my files back. Cant say that about the sand brain SSDs. Its not cheap but I have spent more on external arrays that didnt do half as much. Sometime later: Can you believe am buying my third!! 20TB version of this as the other two are on line and both filled up, mainly with back ups. I had one massive human error induced failure when I was erasing small old drives for donation and guess what. Yep I repartitioned a full 18tb of storage. In time, and with therapy, I will forget about it but it may take years.. Now I take them off line whenever I do dangerous stuff like that. Anyway, mine dont run hot, they dont make a lot of noise, mostly the annoying thing is the time to spin up when for some reason my laptop thinks it needs to talk to the drive to save a file that has nothing to do with the big box. It takes maybe 5-10 seconds from sleep to spin up and access. I dont want to set it to run constantly as that would put too many hours on the drives for no reason. Anyway, no failures, and no problems. Could be cheaper. Dont fit in safety deposit boxes. Read/write is somewhat slow but I let it index when the machine is idle and do backups overnight so its no problem. If you want to move a few gigs, its going to be slow but so are cloud backups or anything else for that matter.

I got a 16GB My Book Duo in December 2020. USB3.1 transfer speeds were good and I had it configured in RAID 1. It worked fine up until a few days ago when the drive stopped showing up in Windows Explorer. Data recovery software indicates that the files are indeed still on the drives, but they have become inaccessible from the OS. Taking out the two drives individually and attempting to see them in Windows Explorer has also been unfruitful. I submitted a ticket with WD and their initial response was in regard to a product I don't own, despite the exact product I own being attached to the ticket. Not too hopeful about support going well. Additionally, the utility software that's included is kinda wonky. The WD Discovery software gives you a prompt to unlock the drive but seems to not actually do anything when you use it. Maybe I'm just unlucky but this kind of failure after 3 months for something configured in RAID 1 is supremely disappointing. UPDATE: After speaking with WD support, it's likely that I disconnected the drive without ejecting and that resulted in drive corruption. The utility software is still a bit wonky, but I won't blame WD for something I'm not sure was my fault.

Obviously the price is what it is and there is nothing I can say about that except it is proportional to the amount of storage but I understand that the price is not in the realm of your average everyday purchase. Having said that it formats in 30 seconds to give you 14.5tb of space. If you are a collector and have over 1800 games and are also looking forward to the new system coming at the end of 2020 (I think) then you have everything you need in this drive. The 20tb drive from this company does NOT work or is not compatible with the xbox one as after 10 hours straight it would not format. 30 seconds is all it took to give me all the space I need and I can buy a second 16tb drive (you can only have 2 external drives for the xbox one) which would cover me for a decade to come in my opinion. I can’t say enough about the quality, speed, and operation about this drive as it works as well for me as the internal drive. As for use with a computer, the drive is obviously compatible and would do the same job as it would with the xbox one and with a computer the 20tb drive WOULD work. I highly recommend the 16tb drive for use with the xbox one and/or computers as I know money is tight and when you spend this type of money you want to make sure you get the right type of value associated with spending this money. My opinion is definitely yes! I hope this helps some people when deciding about purchasing an external hard drive especially for xbox one owners as I did not have much research to go on and that is why I had to return the 20tb hard drive and learned the hard way and shelling out even more money that it was incompatible. Good luck and I hope this 16tb Western Digital drive solves your needs as it has done for me.

Worked fairly well for 5 years. It crashed once (around 2 years) and I lost everything on it, but everything was backed up and I was able to reformat it. Not really acceptable. Second fault just happened (5.1 years) and the drive is unrecognized by windows or the WD utility. Seems unrecoverable. 5 years isn't terrible, but I have Seagate drives that 8 years old and never failed. I've had catastrophic failures on other WD drives so I'm done with WD permanently.

Lots of backup storage. USB connected only. Configured from factory as RAID0 (non-redundant) for max storage volume 44gb raw, 40gb formatted. Must alter configuration before using for RAID1 redundant HD 22 gb raw, 20gb formatted operation to protect from HD failure, see online user instruction on factory website or YT. Runs a bit hotter than external WD USB single HD but not objectionable per CrystalDiskInfo. Quiet no fan but some soft HD noises. Prefer WD, rated by many as best HD available. So far, seems as decent as other WD product, entirely satisfactory.

alta capacidad de almacenamiento, suficiente

This is the worst purchased I ever made. I lost all my data because of it. I have a lot of data and I needed a storage, so after reading about this product from western digital website and their marketing I decided to buy it. From the first time of use, it makes your laptop or pc very slow when booting. Suddenly it won’t be detected by your os and you have to restart. So at least once every day you have to restart your computer. It makes loud noise. The biggest problem was when the enclosure failed out of no where and now I don’t have access to my data. I tried their support but without any reply from them. I have the hard drive and I can’t access the data . I have another hardware plugins which can be used to access data , I connected the hard drive, it is detected by my computer but it asked to initialize and format the data due to some logic WD put on the hard drive. So these hard drive are only accessible from WD enclosure which is very bad . These hard drive belong to me and I should have access to it from any where I want. My advise to anyone don’t buy western digital WD external storage they are very bad. You can buy 1 TB if you want but not more.

Ya he comprado varios drive para almacenar información y estoy muy satisfecho; son fáciles de instalar y su rapidez es muy buena. Son productos confiables. Los he estado utilizando por más de un año y al momento de esta última compra no he tenido problemas. Muy recomendables. Yo aproveche una oferta y la verdad por el precio son una excelente opción

More than enough room to store millions of photos, this drive is huge (capacity). I've had it for one year, and is so far reliable, but 7200rpm is still slow by today's standards and for the price, it's big and a touch too loud (grinding, vibrating). Until they can figure out a way to bring down SSD prices for these capacities, we're stuck with this for now (which does feel like dated-tech for 2026).

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