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Western Digital My Book Live Duo
3.0
final rating

reviewed on
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Criteria Comments Rating
  • Expandability Offers ability to swap out hard drives. Only offers ethernet access to the drive from a computer/network. USB port is only to attach extra storage/external hdd so-so
  • Media support DLNA and iTunes Server support. But read time is slow and iTunes won't read purchased Movies and TV shows stored on this drive via iTunes Server, just music. so-so
  • Speed Just terrible. Took me ~12 hours to set up RAID 1. Takes me 10mins to transfer a gig via ethernet. Speeds on WiFi might make you cry. awful!
  • Noise After less than a month of use the drives now sound like an old Windows 98 machine, crunching away. awful!
  • Design and form factor Great design and look. It's a pity everything else hurts. good
Detailed review
One of the worse purchases I've ever made. I am kicking myself for not picking up a NAS solution that allows for USB transfer of files.

This. Drive. Is. Painfully. Slow.

It was slow on RAID 0 when I first got it and is even slower on RAID 1, which took me about 12 hours to setup.

I have spent the past 3 weeks transferring files by setting up scripts and letting it run through the night. And I am only half way done! I think I'm about to give up. But then the thought of the hours already spent creeps up and I actually think this drive might be able to move me to tears.

I'm extremely tempted to pick up WD's Thunderbolt Duo, but I don't know if I could live with the idea of handing Western Digital anymore of my hard earned money.

Comments (1) subscribe to this review's comments

jb510

jb510

It'd be very helpful to know what speed connection you were using. Often I see complaints about this drive being slow from users connecting to it over 100Mbps ethernet (not gigabit ethernet) or wirelessly (even 11n). 100Mbps ethernet is only 12MB/s 11n wireless will rarely reach it's ~270Mbps top speed unless you don't have any wall in the way so it won't be much faster than that either.

Across gigabit ethernet (capable of 125MB/s) I typically get 30-50MB/s transfer rates to the drive which is roughly USB 2 speeds, and for this class of drive is quite good.
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