SINGAPORE — Having backups is key if you want to avoid suffering catastrophic data loss and WD’s latest storage option, the WD My Book Duo 12TB, comes with massive amounts of space for data hoarders out there.

The storage device connects to your computer via USB3.0 and setup is relatively fuss-free.

You can use My Book Duo as a normal storage drive right away or set it up to duplicate certain drives or folders you specifically want to back up.

The device itself contains two WD 6TB drives, which when fully set up offer 10.9TB — about 11,000GB — of space. Those who wish for extra data protection can easily get the drive to be set to RAID 1, which offers half the amount of space for additional peace of mind: The second 6TB drive will constantly back up the first drive, in case either one fails.

With USB3.0, file transfers are snappy. My Book Duo offers transfers of 290MB/s and you could theoretically transfer 1GB of files in only three seconds.

In real-world testing, it took less than 10 seconds to transfer that 1GB, but oddly, once I tried to back up 1.5TB at a go, the transfer rates slowed appreciably about a third of the way through. If you are backing up a lot of files for the first time, you might want to give yourself some extra time.

With My Book Duo, you are looking at a storage solution for large amounts of files that is simple to set up. There are not many bells and whistles with it: We had previously looked at the WD My Cloud, which is connected to the Internet and allows you to access all your data, even on your smartphone while on the move.

While you could do that with My Book Duo, you will have to set up this up yourself and this is not so easy to do.

At almost S$1,000, the storage device might seem pricey, but it does come with tonnes of space: It can store about 150,000 fully uncompressed image files from the 36.3 megapixel Nikon D800 (about 74.4MB each), or more than five million iPhone 5S photos.

If you are a photography or videography professional — or anyone who stores a lot of data — backing up is important and My Book Duo is something you should consider, if you have the budget. The WD My Book Duo is now available at S$999.