- The safest place for your data
- Automatic backup software
- Cooler, quieter, eco-friendlier
- Capacity Gauge
Technical Details
Product Details
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Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description
The safest place for your data.
WD’s My Book Mirror Edition dual-drive storage system automatically mirrors your valuable data for extra protection. USB 2.0 interface and a powerful combination of features make this system the storage solution of choice for photographers, home users, small offices, and anyone looking for extra assurance that their data is safe.
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 Swapping out a drive is easy and you do not need any tools. | |
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 Gain peace of mind with this true data guardian. Organize and archive your vast photo, music, and artwork libraries. View larger. |
 My Book® Mirror Edition™ 360° view |
Secure your vital data with WD’s My Book® Mirror Edition™ dual-drive storage system with RAID Mirroring. With RAID-based continuous data protection, automatic data backup software, and user-serviceability, this is the perfect backup system for your irreplaceable data.
The safest place for your data
Using RAID mirroring technology, this system automatically and continuously duplicates your data. If one drive in this two-drive system ever fails, the system continues to run and your data is safe. How’s that for peace of mind? Learn more about RAID
Automatic and continuous backup software
Back up your computer - just set it and forget it. Every time you save a change it's backed up and then mirrored on the second drive for the ultimate in data protection.
Cooler, quieter, eco-friendlier
Designed to use only WD drives with GreenPower™ technology, this system, with its efficient convection cooling architecture, fan-less design, and power saving mode, is reliably cool, remarkably quiet and consumes up to 33% less power* than standard systems.
* Tests based on comparison between a 1 TB dual-drive system using 7200 RPM drives and a 1 TB dual-drive system using WD's GreenPower drives.
Easy to set up, easy to use
You’re up and running in a few simple steps. WD’s intuitive RAID wizard software lets you easily modify your RAID settings.
Capacity Gauge
See at a glance how much space is available on your drive.
User serviceable
Want to upgrade a drive? Simply open the case and replace the existing drive – no screwdriver needed.
System Requirements
Available USB port
Mac® OS X 10.4.11+, 10.5.2+
Windows® 2000/XP/Vista
What's in the Box
Dual-drive storage system, USB cable, AC adapter, Software CD, Quick Install Guide.
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RAID is a high-tech acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The acronym is not important. What is important is that the inclusion of RAID technology in WD's dual-drive external storage systems make them very powerful storage products.
With RAID enabled on a storage system you can connect two or more drives in the system so that they act like one big fast drive or set them up so that one drive in the system is used to automatically and instantaneously duplicate (or mirror) your data for real-time backup.
There are two reasons you might want a RAID system of drives.
1. You need tons of storage space and you need it to be fast. (RAID 0)
2. You want to instantaneously and automatically backup your data. (RAID 1)
Which RAID mode should I use?
 RAID Mode Comparison |
1. Speed (RAID 0)
Set in high-performance mode (also called striped mode or RAID 0) the storage system gives you the power you need when you're:
- Designing huge graphics and you need a lightning-fast Photoshop scratch space.
- Recording large DV files while maintaining clean audio performance.
- Editing DV or HD video and you want a smooth work flow with no dropped frames.
- Rendering complex 3D objects or special effects.
- Performing disk-intensive database operations.
- Driven to be the first geek on your block with a computer so fast it blows your socks off.
Why is RAID 0 so fast?
It's a bit complicated, but suffice it to say that two heads, or in this case, drives, are better than one. Picture two hoses filling a bucket at the same time or two men bailing a boat and you can understand why two drives striped are faster than one. Data is saved (striped) across both drives and accessed in parallel by both drives so you get higher data transfer rates on large data accesses and higher input/output rates on small data accesses.
2. Data protection (RAID 1)
Set the system to data protection mode (also know as mirrored mode or RAID 1) and the data is duplicated onto one of the drives providing two copies of all the data. This reduces your capacity to the size of a single disk.
So why do I want that kind of redundancy?
It's your data, your family pictures, your movie of baby's first steps, your first novel. Is it important? You decide. If it is, then RAID mirroring if for you.
Product Description
WD's My Book Mirror Edition dual-drive storage system automatically mirrors your valuable data for extra protection. The USB 2.0 interface and a powerful combination of features make this system the storage solution of choice for photographers, home users, small offices, and anyone looking for extra assurance that their data is safe.
Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
47 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great drive, but defrag thoroughly and often,
By Joe Skrote "Joe Skrote" (Winchester, Va.) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition 2TB USB 2.0 (WDH2U20000N) (Personal Computers)
I've owned this drive for about five months at this writing, and use it to store all my video and music files (both mp3 and wav). And I still have 400GB of free space!
Its USB 2.0 interface is fast enough for video playback in a RAID 0 configuration (since it's actually two 1TB drives it can also be set RAID 1 to automatically back up everything you put on it). It's a fairly small and very attractive package that doesn't get overly warm; if it has cooling fans inside I haven't heard them running yet. I much prefer its keyhole-shaped fluorescent-looking indicator light to the blinking bull's eye I've seen on older MyBook drives. Its up-and-down motion is actually kind of soothing. Opening the box to replace a drive, if necessary, doesn't look too difficult if you're so inclined. It's quiet but not totally silent -- there's a soft clattering sound when it's working but I don't find it annoying and it's totally masked by movie audio or music. One bit of advice, do NOT assume that Microsoft Vista's automatic "Defrag Lite" will do a good job on a drive this huge. I started to experience playback problems with recorded video and discovered that the drive was severely fragmented, even with Vista set to defrag it once a week. There's no easy way to analyze the drive for fragmentation with Vista defrag's dumbed-down user interface. And it would be great if WD included a defrag utility in its Drive Manager or Diagnostics Tool -- it doesn't. But there's freeware out there (Auslogics or JKDefrag) that will do a thorough job and, even better, actually show you what it's doing. So defrag this drive thoroughly and often, especially if you copy, move, delete and convert a lot of large video files.
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Unreliable and questionable RAID software,
By
This review is from: Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition 2TB USB 2.0 (WDH2U20000N) (Personal Computers)
I purchased this drive with the intent to backup all my family videos, photos and other files. Currently my file server actually has a RAID 1 setup but I thought redundancy can never be too much.
Well - The My Book Mirror Edition was not the answer. At the end of all of this I purchased two of these units, having each one successively fail on me. I probably only ended up loading 300+ gigs on the drives. They would work well for 2-3 days and then when transferring a large file (typically video) all hell would break loose with the WD raid manager saying I had issues (red icon). After each incident the external drive would not be recognisable by my PC (running XP). The drives would also not work on another of my PCs. I would get dialogs of Unknown USB something and couldn't get the drives to mount. In both instances I had to take out the physical hard drives to remove my personal data and the actual drives ran without issue. Therefore I can only surmise that the WD system for the RAID setup or the manager is not ready for prime time. Given my personal experience I would highly recommend people to not consider purchasing this ext. drive if they want peace of mind.
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
WD MyBooks Drop Connections,
By DanJo (East Wenatchee WA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Western Digital My Book Mirror Edition 2TB USB 2.0 (WDH2U20000N) (Personal Computers)
We've got about five of the 2TB Western Digital MyBooks for our IT department. We've had them a couple years, approximately. We've learned it's a bad idea to try to use them for anything more demanding than, as advertised, storing photos. For instance, we've learned it's a bad idea to use these in association with backup-to-disk applications. No Go. These USB devices seem only suited for static data that doesn't need to be referenced often. They're far too slow, and they are far too ready to drop their connection to the PC to which they are attached. We've tried them on a variety of PCs and servers. Even today, for example, I'm just trying to copy data to them from across the network -- the device cannot maintain a connection long enough to copy an 800MB folder to it.
We have not tried the firewire connection to see if that works any better.
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