Although Apple got first dibs on implementing the new speedy interface on its products, plenty of other manufacturers were involved early on as well, including Western Digital. The technology supports 8 channels of HD audio, daisy-chaining, and hot-plugging and was co-developed by Intel and Apple. The technology makes even the relatively speedy USB 3.0 interface (5Gbps) look downright pokey by comparison. Thunderbolt, originally dubbed “ Light Peak”, is a dual-protocol interface that combines PCI-Express and DisplayPort into one metaprotocol with bi-directional speeds of up to 10Gbps.

Hampered in the past by relatively slow interfaces such as USB and FireWire, Intel’s Thunderbolt interface promises comparatively blazing fast speeds, and available storage capacities are now in the multi-terabyte range.

WD Discovery is a tray application a small icon appears in the Windows system tray in the lower right-hand. WD Security and WD Drive Utilities, can be installed from your My Book drive. Indeed, external storage has come a long way in a relatively short time. For Mac, open WD Discovery for Mac.dmg to install WD software to help modify drive settings. At one point, we reflected on our first external hard drive-a 40GB unit salvaged from a laptop-and remarked at how quaint it seems in comparison to WD's powerful, spacious storage beast. While we were testing the WD My Book VelociRaptor Duo, a funny thing happened.