I purchased a WD My Book Duo and have two quesions:
I would like to backup the data from an additional hard drive on to the My Book Duo.
I saw that at the back of the My Book Duo there are USB 3.0 ports. How shall I proceed? Plugging the external hard drive into one of those or into the computer (like I did with the My Book Duo)?
Can I backup both my computer and the additional hard drive on the My Book Duo? If so, how - maybe by creating two different subfolders on the My Book Duo, one for the computer backup, one for the additional hard drive? (I use the RAID 1 settings on the My Book Duo)
If you would like for the process to be handled automatically then the hard drive will need to be connected to your computer since WD SmartWare will not read it once it’s connected to your WD My Book Live Duo. That is of course unless you have a 3rd party app able to copy data from a NAS.
Is it possible/OK to additionally/manually copy data from the computer/an external hard drive to the WD My Book Duo, i.e., not to use WD SmartWare everytime I want to backup things or do I always have to use the WD SmartWare software? Put differently: Can I use the WD My Book Duo also as an “ordinary” external hard drive and move/copy files manually via the (Windows) Explorer? Will those files also be mirrored onto the second WD My Book Duo-internal hard drive (RAID 1)?
I use the the WD My Book Duo with my notebook (which has only one small hard drive). I can use the WD My Book Duo as the main hard drive for my files, can’t I? Files directly put on the WD My Book Duo will automatically be mirrored onto the second WD My Book Duo-internal hard drive (RAID 1), won’t they?
Yes, you can use your WD My Book Live Duo manually; you only need to map a share as a shortcut. The information will be automatically mirrored as soon as it is stored in your NAS:
However, please bear in mind the USB port is only an input, not an output. As such the device will still need an Ethernet/Network connection. If you connect a USB hard drive you will have the option to map it as well as another share within your NAS.
In theory yes, however, some programs will not run directly from a NAS. Additionally, please bear in mind RAID 1 (Mirror) is not a backup per se, but rather a fault-tolerance method in case of an individual hard drive failure. The data as a whole is still susceptible to a controller (Enclosure) malfunction or internal corruption. As such, an independent backup is still recommended.
The only issue is that my WD My Book Duo is an “ordinary” My Book Duo, i.e., not the “Live” version with the cloud function.
So all I want to do is to save files onto the WD My Book Duo when it is plugged in to my notebook, i.e., the same I have always done with other external hard drives. In those cases I just plugged the hard drive in and the system identified it automatically as an additional hard drive (e.g., D: or E: with the name of the hard drive added). I then use the external hard drives as quasi-ordinary drives, e.g., for iTunes.
I assume that is not any different with the WD My Book Duo, is it? (The only difference then is that the files would be saved parallel to both WD My Book Duo-internal drives, right? If it would only be saved to one of the two, can I later mirror the files from one WD My Book Duo-internal drive to the second, i.e. RAID 1)?
My apologies, I was under the impression of a device name abbreviation
Correct, as soon as you connect it you’ll be able to see the volume and copy data into it. Pretty much like a big thumb drive.
That depends on the RAID mode. If you’re using RAID 1 (Mirror) then you will not be able to see the second drive which mirrors the data; the entire drive is treated as a mirror, and everything added is copied at once to both internal drives. In order to be able to see and interact with the 2 internal drives you’ll need to change the RAID mode from Mirror to JBOD. This will allow you to manage both internal drives independently and manually copy/transfer data between the two volumes at will.
Something to notice is that most WD RAID drives are shipped with a RAID 0 (Stripe) configuration for maximum capacity by fusing the internal drives. Mirror on the other hand halves the usable space. If your hard drive is showing the full size instead of half then you’re currently not using RAID 1 (Mirror).
Perfect, thanks! I think that clarifies the issue.
I assume that I can easily switch from RAID 0 to RAID 1 once plugged in (not tried yet though). And if the first WD My Book Duo-internal drive breaks, I can (hopefully) replace it by the second, the one where everything is mirrored.
I nevertheless won’t be able to copy/backup data from an additional external hard drive to the WD My Book Duo if I plug the additional one into the WD My Book Duo using its USB 3.0 entry port, right? I would have to go via the notebook, i.e., plug both the WD My Book Duo an d the additional drive into the notebook, won’t I?