WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo 6TB – Review

A couple of years ago when we were talking about SSD, we were faced with a very different reality, in which it was difficult to get them to accept. Most people do not know them, had gained some misconceptions and others were simply too expensive. Today they are reality thanks to more digestible prices but also due to a massive expansion in the new series of laptops.

With Apple MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Retina has done first-hand the benefits of a SSD even to those who knew them, and today they are also increasingly popular in desktop computers. So much speed and responsiveness virtually immediate at the expense of only one main aspect: the size.

The most extreme of this trend we see in the recent Mac Pro that before they could mount up to 4 HDD and now have only one SSD, which base is also quite small (256GB). iMac and Mac mini there is also the alternative of Fusion Drive, which I personally do not recommend for professional use, but the truth is that we will increasingly rely on the external drives.

Today those USB 3.0 is very fast, but the Thunderbolt port provides greater continuity and does recognize the external drives exactly as if they were connected with the system bus, with significant benefits in terms of maintenance. Western Digital is one of the most trusted brands and has made the unit very interesting, as the WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo 6TB.

The two internal HDD are easily accessible without having to use a screwdriver with a top cover to pressure, a safety net and the two sliding slots. It consists of two Red 3TB WD drives, which can be easily configured with the app WD Drive Utilities or, more simply, by Disk Utility, without having to install any dedicated application. The possibilities available for the user are essentially 3. The first is to use the disks in Stripe RAID, concatenated into fast one logical drive 6TB.

The second is the RAID Mirror, having available for a 3 TB disk while the second will be a copy of Backup continuously updated in the background. The third mode is the JBOD allowing you to use the two units separately, but lost both the speed advantages of Stripe that that security offered by the Mirror. The default configuration is the first and the one that today we will analyze more carefully.

On the back are arranged connections, both the socket for the power supply that the two Thunderbolt ports. The supplied cable (which is black) can be used to connect with the computer, and then a second door will remain available directly on the disk, in this way you will be able to take advantage of the cascade connection of any Thunderbolt device, or even a screen with Mini DisplayPort (structurally and logically compatible).

The unit has a high operational quietness. In standby mode, and virtually silent and has the advantage of waking up in less than a second, while USB 3.0 and Firewire disks are not as responsive. Even while writing the noise is very low and the open design allows the surface to dissipate heat well enough without the use of noisy fans.

Using it in mirror you will get the actual speed of the disk, exactly as if it were connected internally, while stripe performances are achieved truly enviable. Our tests came almost touching the 300MB / s for both reading and writing, demonstrating an exceptional companion for computers with SSD and external drives, which require the processing of substantial projects.

Conclusion – WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo 6TB

For a professional WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo 6TB is an excellent choice, probably the best if you also consider the noise factor and good security offered by Western Digital, one of the brands with the lowest number of defective units on the market (second only to Toshiba ). The increasing adoption of SSD drives makes such a smart choice for the bathroom, which might perhaps prefer to use mirror in getting a lower speed but having the built-in backup without having to buy a second unit.