Hello
I’m currently trying to consider what drive option is the best as I’d like something that is easily accessible from my main PC and my Laptop to provide a large storage. Now the first thought will obviously be NAS, and thats what I thought too, but I have found out about My Book Duo which seems to be what I actually need - two WD Reds in a raid case that connects via USB to another device. After all, my router can already take over NAS functionality in the local network and the internet for storage media connected over one of the two USB 3.0 ports on it, so I could save on the additional hardware that comes with a NAS for just that purpose if my router is already capable of doing it. My router supports up to 4 drives with a maximum 4TB per partition - and 4 TB happens to be exactly what I’m looking for (4 TB + 4 TB backup disk)
Unfortunately I was unable to find any clear info on this, neither on WDs website, nor the online manual for the My Book Duo, nor anywhere else, all sources were split 50:50 about this, so I’m asking here if someone can guide me.
Generally the My Book seems to require being serviced from a Windows or Mac PC using the included software, at least for setting up the raid mode according to the manual as this drive was designed as a huge storage space for PC users that do not want a internal drive it seems.
However, many sites suggest that MyBook drives would work just fine with routers, but were always talking of the single ones then, which will just appear as a single HDD to the devices you connect it to and won’t have any settings like RAID that need to be set on a PC.
WD also suggests in multiple places on the online help that MyBook Duos are in fact capable of being plugged into a router or a MyCloud NAS as well to further expand space on those, but might require a reformat depending on the device.
Now I wonder, if I set up the drives for RAID 1 configuration (so that HDD1 is mirrored on HDD2, effectively leaving one 4 TB storage media visible to the PC while the other 4 TB drive syncs automatically with the first), can I turn it off then, attach it to another device (such as a router) and it will appear as a 4 TB storage again there? In other words, is the MyBook capable of maintaining the raid config on its own or is a PC with the appropriate drivers required to even use it correctly without messing things up?
That also makes me wonder about reformatting or even introducing new partitions to the system. This is said to be done with Windows on-board tools, if I format HDD1 there, will it automatically sync that formatting over to HDD2 too or do I need to take care to format both in exactly the same way for raid to work?
Greetings, Mika
