Is The WD Software Indispensable For Running A My Book Duo With A Mac?

WD External Drives External Drives for Mac
1

I try to prevent having software running in the background as often as I can.

Can run a My Book Duo without using any permanently active WD software?

It would be okay for me to set up the My Book Duo with the WD software once.

I want to use the My Book Duo as a Raid 1 Time Machine backup.

2

The WD Drive Utility can be removed once the drive RAID is setup. It runs in the background to monitor the health of the RAID. You would only need to re-install it of you wanted to run diagnostics on the drive, which could probably be done using disk utility, or if you wanted to reformat or change the RAID mode.