Western Digital Announces 20TB My Book Duo RAID Desktop Storage System

[beanbaguk]

There’s an abundant supply of either short-sightedness, or ignorance on this forum today.

Such capacities are simply impossible with SSD’s. They are not used for everyday activities, but backup storage. Movies, photos, all sorts....

Also see my image. This is my NAS/Server setup on my home network. It doesn’t look like much but it gives me an additional 12TB storage on a dual link GB LAN network over Cat7 cabling for performance and this is then distributed using three Airport Express access points and an AirPort Extreme Time Capsule Access Point.

Short of the long, if I attach this 20TB unit to my NAS setup, I automatically get another 20TB on that NAS setup. It’s that simple and I don’t even have to reformat as it’s shared over SMB 3.0.

If you’re telling me that’s a waste of time and money, then you crack on sunshine and have it your way!

 

[longofest]

Why no thunderbolt ?!

Thunderbolt gives you absolutely nothing when connecting to spinning disks.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

More and more devices shipping with USB-C. Apple's decision to drop the USB-A connector continues to be affirmed as the right choice.

That's sooooooo right. Apple is always right in all things. Look back at the 2011 push of Thunderbolt by Apple. Now in 2017, it's hard to find any attachable accessory without a Thunderbolt port, right? It's just everywhere because of Apple's decision to endorse Thunderbolt. With it as everywhere as it now is, that continues to be an affirmed right choice too.

We can only hope that Apple now pushing USB-C well into year 2 will make the ubiquity of that jack be realized just as quickly. Wasn't it great when Apple endorsed it in some Macs, then replaced proprietary Lightning with USB3 in iPhone & iPads and now it's THE universal standard for all of Apple's own products? Of course, the world should follow Apple's lead. Because once Apple decides something shall be, it shall be. Again, they are always right about everything they do.

 

[longofest]

Also see my image. This is my NAS/Server setup on my home network. It doesn’t look like much but it gives me an additional 12TB storage on a dual link GB LAN network over Cat7 cabling for performance and this is then distributed using three Airport Express access points and an AirPort Extreme Time Capsule Access Point.
...
If you’re telling me that’s a waste of time and money, then you crack on sunshine and have it your way!

The only thing that I'll say is a waste of money is using Cat7. Especially for a short run using sub 10GB LAN, that was a waste of money. But the other stuff is fine

 

[beanbaguk]

That's sooooooo right. Apple is always right in all things. Look back at the 2011 push of Thunderbolt by Apple. Now in 2017, it's hard to find any attachable accessory without a Thunderbolt port, right? It's just everywhere because of Apple's decision to endorse Thunderbolt. With it as everywhere as it now is, that continues to be an affirmed right choice too.

We can only hope that Apple now pushing USB-C well into year 2 will make the ubiquity of that jack be realized just as quickly. Wasn't it great when Apple endorsed it in some Macs, then replaced proprietary Lightning with USB3 in iPhone & iPads and now it's THE universal standard for all of Apple's own products? Of course, the world should follow Apple's lead. Because once Apple decides something shall be, it shall be. Again, they are always right about everything they do.

No sarcasm there at all!

 

[profets]

Thunderbolt gives you absolutely nothing when connecting to spinning disks.

I wouldn't mind thunderbolt as I have a few Macs from 2011-2012 that have thunderbolt ports but was prior to Apple including USB3.

 

[GoodWheaties]

Why no thunderbolt ?!

This thing isn't going to saturate its USB 3.1 connection, let alone a TB3 connection.

Edit for clarification: There are only two drives so assuming a max of about 200 Mbps, that is probably less than 400 Mbps in RAID 0 it needs for the connection. Most likely people will use this in RAID 1 anyway.

 

[beanbaguk]

The only thing that I'll say is a waste of money is using Cat7. Especially for a short run using sub 10GB LAN, that was a waste of money. But the other stuff is fine

Cat7 cable runs are the longest. I own a 3 story home with a basement so it runs across all four floors.....basement, ground, 1st and 2nd so it's essential for it's purpose.

The primary switch is on the ground floor and all wall cabling down there is Cat6e. (We couldn't physically pull the Cat7 through as it was so stiff), but the cable lengths are no more than 5 metres so it's ok. There are various sockets on that floor to my HT set-up and the TimeCapsule and that means theres no need to stream movies over Wifi to the TV.

On top of this, all the security cameras are hard-wired to avoid any intruder bypassing them which is so easy to do with Wifi these days.

All in all it's a pretty robust set-up and deliberately made that way to ensure reliability.

The case is a custom server running Windows for practicality purposes. It was a Synology OS for a while but I found it too restrictive and Windows 10 gives me all I need. All systems connecting to this server are MacOS / iOS devices without any problems whatsoever.

ETA: If anyone would like to offer me one of the 20TB storage units to test and provide real-world performance numbers, I'd gladly offer my time. I for one would love one of those 20TB boxes!

 

[jeyf]

SPINNING RUST IS DEAD
for my residential and or office needs really looking for a network-able appliance to support common none SATA solid state memory (SSD). No need for RAID or SATA.

the Western Digital box is too little too late.

 

[jdillings]

Just get a Synology

 

[Chancha]

The biggest value in having TB3 in a starting chain is to ensure enough bandwith for the down stream devices. In the case of iMac 2017 for example, attaching a USB-C drive such as this one is alredy occupying one of the two available Thunderbolt 3 ports, with no ability to daisy chain further, Gb/s of potential bandwidth is wasted into thin air.

What makes it worse is this drive only having USB 3.1 gen 1 5Gb/s top speed, it may as eell stay being USB-A. Guess this is a perfect fit for retina MacBooks though.

 

[beanbaguk]

SPINNING RUST IS DEAD
for my residential and or office needs really looking for a network-able appliance to support common none SATA solid state memory (SSD). No need for RAID or SATA.

the Western Digital box is too little too late.

Another person who hasn't got the foggiest what he's talking about. Let's do some basic math.

We're going to use US Amazon prices for the best comparison.

10TB WD Pro RED NAS drive = $455.99

For the purposes of this comparison we'll make it realistic so RAID 0 will be used, therefore two drives are needed.

US$911.98

Keep in mind this storage is at best, limited to 1Gbps when accesses by an end user, so 125MB/s.

Now lets try your SSD option.

Since 2TB options are not yet available until later this year, we'll use the 1TB option. WD Blue 1TB from WD.

1TB Blue SSD = $299.99

OK, so we need 20 of these fellas, bringing us to a total of US$5,999.80!

Not to mention the ridiculous rig you would need to hold all 20 drives in place, and the bus needed to plug it all in. I would estimate that would be at very least another US$1k but we'll ignore that for the purposes of this exercise.

Using "spinning rust" as you eloquently put it, works out at US$45.60 per terabyte at absolutely zero performance loss against the SSD's in a real-world scenario.

Your SSD set-up would cost 657% more than "spinning rust", and that doesn't even take into account the infrastructure needed for your great idea.

Short of the long. You have absolutely no idea as to what you're talking about.

When do schools start again?
[doublepost=1503587801][/doublepost]

Just get a Synology

Or you plug this into a Synology NAS....

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

No GB LAN, No TB3 = Not a viable shared access storage solution for most applicaitons.

Hillbilly NAS?
[doublepost=1503588789][/doublepost]

Would never buy a segate again. Everyone I have had dies in less than a year. I don't get how they are still in business.

They have had runs of bad drives from time to time...
[doublepost=1503589158][/doublepost]For the price of the unit on the right, you can get probably 5 of the units on the left and have tons more storage.

The fully loaded standard rack EMC SSD array was over 100k, and even the one they took to trade shows was loaded with blanks because of the cost, as you would imagine. PLUS I wonder how often the drives are replaced for overuse.

 

[Marx55]

Since 2TB options are not yet available until later this year, we'll use the 1TB option.

There are 16TB SSD already as single drives. RAID 0 is the best to lose data (with more than twice probility if one disk or the controller fails). And if you want cheap whatever and even larger capacities, buy tape!

 

[WilliamG]

7200 or 5400? The elio enclosure model?

5400rpm. Heck, they're so cheap, too if you live near a Best Buy in the USA. The Western Digital Easystore 8TB external USB 3.0 has been $159.99 several times now, and includes a latest-gen WD 8TB RED NAS drive with 256MB cache. Superb pricing for a great drive. I have a bunch of them RAIDed in Thunderbolt 2 - OWC Thunderbay 4 enclosures. For that alone this WD duo (with unknown drives) doesn't seem like a great deal to me.

 

[phairphan]

Another person who hasn't got the foggiest what he's talking about. Let's do some basic math.

We're going to use US Amazon prices for the best comparison.

10TB WD Pro RED NAS drive = $455.99

For the purposes of this comparison we'll make it realistic so RAID 0 will be used, therefore two drives are needed.

US$911.98

Keep in mind this storage is at best, limited to 1Gbps when accesses by an end user, so 125MB/s.

Now lets try your SSD option.

Since 2TB options are not yet available until later this year, we'll use the 1TB option. WD Blue 1TB from WD.

1TB Blue SSD = $299.99

OK, so we need 20 of these fellas, bringing us to a total of US$5,999.80!

Not to mention the ridiculous rig you would need to hold all 20 drives in place, and the bus needed to plug it all in. I would estimate that would be at very least another US$1k but we'll ignore that for the purposes of this exercise.

Using "spinning rust" as you eloquently put it, works out at US$45.60 per terabyte at absolutely zero performance loss against the SSD's in a real-world scenario.

Your SSD set-up would cost 657% more than "spinning rust", and that doesn't even take into account the infrastructure needed for your great idea.

Short of the long. You have absolutely no idea as to what you're talking about.

When do schools start again?
[doublepost=1503587801][/doublepost]

Or you plug this into a Synology NAS....

I think the person was going to use non-SATA SSDs. I suggest increasing your budget.

 

[robertosh]

You mean pro-pirates?

Prosumers?

Amateurs can easily rack up TBs of 4K video these days.

[doublepost=1503593413][/doublepost]

Plenty of home use. Great system that could back-up my existing 20 TB RAID 5 array.

Backup of a Raid 5, seriously ??

 

[Phonephreak]

This sounds great. Would love to have 20gb ready to go

 

[MacSince1985]

No GB LAN, No TB3 = Not a viable shared access storage solution for most applications.

The WD My Book series is designed for desktop use (although you could probably connect it to am existing NAS). The My Cloud series is their NAS and already goes up to 40TB. Different models for different needs.

I assume it's 20GB in Raid 0 and "only" 10GB in Raid 1.

 

[cyberlocke]

Backup of a Raid 5, seriously ??

Redundancy and backup are two different things. You need both. Check this out for more info . . .

 

[MacSince1985]

If this was $500 (or less) I would be all over it. (8TB drives regularly go for $160, so I think $500 is a fair price for 20TB)

I have 2 of the 8TB WD drives and they are infinitely quieter than my 8TB Seagate drive. Just streaming a movie off it from across the room from me with the fridge running and AC going and I STILL want to chuck that thing against the wall.

I have not seen the WD Red for that low a price. Maybe some lower end drives. $280-$300 is more typical for the 8TB model. Multiply that by 2, add a case and controller and you end up at the $629.99 MSRP for the 16TB model. The street price will be a bit lower.

 

[Chancha]

I have not seen the WD Red for that low a price. Maybe some lower end drives. $280-$300 is more typical for the 8TB model. Multiply that by 2, add a case and controller and you end up at the $629.99 MSRP for the 16TB model. The street price will be a bit lower.

WD knows this well and they price their My Book series pretty competitively in the last few years. There are even points in pricing history that a USB3 bundled enclosure costs less than buying the bare drive yourself, especially when it is a new large capacity single platter.

 

[cerote]

I have not seen the WD Red for that low a price. Maybe some lower end drives. $280-$300 is more typical for the 8TB model. Multiply that by 2, add a case and controller and you end up at the $629.99 MSRP for the 16TB model. The street price will be a bit lower.

Yea reds run more than that. Think my recent 4tb was just shy of that 140. I have 4 4tb reds in my NAS.

 

[gian8989]

5400rpm. Heck, they're so cheap, too if you live near a Best Buy in the USA. The Western Digital Easystore 8TB external USB 3.0 has been $159.99 several times now, and includes a latest-gen WD 8TB RED NAS drive with 256MB cache. Superb pricing for a great drive. I have a bunch of them RAIDed in Thunderbolt 2 - OWC Thunderbay 4 enclosures. For that alone this WD duo (with unknown drives) doesn't seem like a great deal to me.

In Italy you need 336$ on Amazon for a 8tb red.
I have found a lot of people complain about them been noisy and other saying they are quiet. It is probably just luck.
I bought it with a coupon so It was a pain to change it but I would have asked amazon to change it if i had bought it with them.

 

[puckhead193]

This looks very tempting for me to back up my videos off my Pegasus 2R4 and make way for another year of videos on my drive. Price is right and has enough space for me. Wish amazon had it on stock...