Western Digital WD MyBook Thunderbolt Dual External Hard Drive Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Western Digital WD MyBook Thunderbolt Dual External Hard Drive Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
2012-07-18
welcome to my unboxing of a pretty cool
product this is the WD my book
thunderbolt duo and what makes it duo is
the fact that oh man okay give me a sec
and we got the plastic off which is
great okay so what makes this a duo
harddrive is that it is a dual drive
storage system ok peak performance for
creative professionals more on how to
achieve that in just a moment this is a
4 terabyte total capacity unit although
it's available in a variety of
configurations uses Thunderbolt
technology although the cables sold
separately and works with Mac OS X time
machine and now that we have Thunderbolt
on the PC it'll also work with whatever
PC technologies you want to use it with
as well so it's not just just a Mac
product you guys this is very much a PC
product - so don't hit that dislike bug
just yet alright let's see what else the
Western Digital has to say for
themselves before we get too much
further into this so we'll cover that
later three-year warranty on this guy
there's the front in real size oh it's
not really actual size hold on let's see
let's see how actual size they've gotten
it because it doesn't look quite right
to me hold on I do like it when on the
outside of the box they do like an
actual size thing is it right let's see
see it's the heights right yeah oh it's
almost almost it's very very close so
that's what the unit looks like on this
side you see ok we'll show you all the
parts on the back later I use a blue
blue okay yeah let's go so let's have a
look at the included accessories power
adapter remember no Thunderbolt cable
included those they're still really
really expensive so it's up to the user
to source the Thunderbolt cable they
show you how to plug in a Thunderbolt
cable Thunderbolt plug-and-play so as
long as your computer setup for it you
should be fine alright why would you
need one of these very simple answer and
the simple answer is that you need
extremely high speed or very reliable
and high speed external storage so the
two drives in here can be configured
either as j-bot or as Jayvaughn which is
just a bunch of discs so you'll have
four four terabytes of non back top and
non accelerated storage or as raid zero
for high performance however if one of
the drives inside were to fail you would
lose all of the data on it so you'd want
to make sure you're also doing like a
nightly backup or something of your of
your working drive because then you'd be
using it as more like a high-performance
external drive off of your laptop that
you use for video or rendering or photo
editing or something like that okay so
you can use it for high performance or
the third option is you can configure it
in raid 1 which will give you the
performance of a single drive and the
capacity of a single drive so you'll be
down to 2 terabytes of capacity however
you will have complete redundancy
between those two drives so if one drive
just fails outright you know you drop
the thunderbolt duo off your desk and
one of the drives doesn't work anymore
you're still ok all your data will be
there so jayvon which gives you four
gigs normal speed and if one drive dies
only the data on it is lost the other
data is fine so there's that then
there's raid 0 which is high performance
4 terabytes of capacity but increased
risk of data loss and then there's raid
1 which gives you single drive
performance and perfect data recovery in
the event of a hardware failure so the
unit itself is pretty pretty plain you
got your activity led your WD logo
pretty plain on this side don't worry
these on these marks aren't real these
are just bits of packaging pretty plain
on this side as well on the back you
find the business end this is where
we've got two Thunderbolt ports so you
can use it as a pass-through if you have
multiple storage devices or if you have
other Thunderbolt devices remember
there's not much now but more is coming
or if you have a display port display
that you want to pass through to that's
why it has two for the daisy-chaining
functionality of thunderbolt we've also
got our power in and here is a really
really cool feature about this now most
external drives are not user serviceable
this one ah there we go is so all you
got to do is pop the top and I'm
learning this in real time I have done
no preparation on how to how to swap out
a drive simply open the case and
exchange the existing drive no tools
needed do that okay so there's a little
ventilated piece there so actually let's
have a look at the ventilation so you
got vent holes at the bottom vent holes
no no vent holes at the back so they're
relying on natural convection rubber
feet here to get keep it a little bit
off the table cold air will come in here
rise and then go out of the top of the
unit great okay so how are these uh-oh
okay I think I get it
and there we go
WD caviar green drives it recommends to
use WD green power drives only that
might be a power restriction it might be
a quiet restriction I mean you don't
want something sitting on your desk to
have really really loud seek times if
you're using it all the time if it's
sitting right next to your head for
whatever reason Western Digital
recommends using green drives in here so
it's that simple all you got to do is
take out these screws one two take this
piece and put it on the screw when you
put it into the new drive as well so
that you'll actually be able to remove
the new drive and you could oh that's
that's cool so they're not walking you
into this external storage unit they're
actually giving you the option to go oh
well to two terabyte drives isn't enough
for me anymore and now there are six
terabyte you know Green drives I can
just buy a couple of those throw them in
there and then I'm ready to have a way
way bigger external thunderbolt storage
solution because Thunderbolt is a
standard that's going to matter for a
long time now and you're getting a much
better value with a product like this if
you're going to be able to keep using it
over an extended period of time so
that's actually very very big of them to
go ahead and do that
so I'm just trying to get this back in
at some point here you know what I'm not
gonna stress about it too much but I
think I got enough what's up yeah
there's a cat
thank you so much for contributing that
to the to the video today there we go I
got it so let's see if there's anything
else that we're missing here
all right so extra performance with raid
0 raid 1 mirrored do more work in less
time right why would you want a
thunderbolt external drive I mean I
covered this very briefly before but
might as well yeah just as fast okay
there's that thank you for that
contribution fundable is up to 10
gigabit per second although until hard
drives get a fair bit faster even with
raid zero we're not going to max that
out we're going to need like uber drives
this is for professionals this is for
notebook users if your notebook has
Thunderbolt then you can use this for
huge mass storage on your desk that you
can quickly and easily plug in so you
plug in one cable boom your desktop
monitors on your your storage is
connected and you don't have to sort of
fumble around with a bunch of different
cables so there's that and then usage
scenario number two is you need
high-performance reliable external
storage for a desktop PC that you're
using for professional use a lot of the
time it can be more convenient to use an
external external storage device rather
than throwing drives in and out of your
your actual computer tower all the time
I mean if you have a custom computer it
might not be as hard but a lot of om
computers it's a real hassle to fuss
around with hard drives and this is
comparatively very very easy so thank
you for checking out my unboxing and
first look at the my book Thunderbolt
duel I will be doing a follow-up video
on this one where we have a look at
performance over thunderbolt with this
particular device and a few different
configurations so stay tuned for that
on the NCIX pawn channel and don't
forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips
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