Western Digital’s new My Book drives come in 22TB and 44TB Duo sizes

Western Digital has managed to cram even more space into its My Book external drives, this time with a 22TB version and up to 44TB for the chonkier Duo model (via AnandTech). The company says the new models are available now at retailers, perfect if you’re constantly recording 8K footage on a Samsung phone and need to store about 1,222 hours of footage somewhere.

WD’s previous My Book drives maxed out at 18TB / 36TB (Duo). The company is selling the new My Book with a single 22TB drive inside for $599.99. The new behemoth in Western Digital’s lineup, the My Book Duo 44TB, costs $1,499.99.

If you need an indicator of how far hard disk capacity has come, Western Digital’s largest My Book in 2017 was a 20TB Duo, and it retailed for $849 — a whole $250 more than the new single drive 22TB model.

The drives support 256-bit AES hardware encryption, with Western Digital’s software for password protection and managing data backups.

The smaller My Book supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 with a Micro B interface in the rear, and the My Book Duo uses USB 3.2 Gen 1 with a USB-C interface. The Duo also includes a hub with two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, so you can piggyback even more storage and peripherals off of it if you need to, while both are powered by the included external power supply.

The Duo’s drives use hardware RAID 0 by default but can be changed to support RAID 1 for redundancy or JBOD for independent drives. The top of the unit also opens to pull the drives out if you need to swap one.

Update February 15th, 2023 4:25PM ET: A previous version of this article stated the price of the 44TB My Book Duo was $1,099.99, as listed in Western Digital’s press release. The press release has been corrected to note that it retails for $1,499.99.