I just installed the Mybook Live, and everything is great, but I am wondering about how to back it up. I tried to back it up with an older version of Acronis True Image (ok its a really old version), but it just crashed. Will newer version of Acronis do the trick, or does anyone else have a better solution. Thanks. (Running Windows XP)
You can install Smartware from the CD that comes with the unit. Also you can use any other software that supports network drives like this one
he’s talking about backing up the MBL to another place, right?
Are you saving files to the MBL using drag and drop folders, or do you have SmartWare on the PC saving files to the MBL?
I would suggest mounting it as a network drive then using robocopy for a native solution. I use rsync, which will run under windows, but as a port from *nix.
What are you backing it up to? I went for a 2tb usb external and regret not getting a second network attached drive.
Sorry for the late reply
I am using the MBL as a central repository for files shared bewtween a laptop and deskop machine. Nothing fancy, and I am not really using it as a media server. I have “My Documents” set to a share on MBL, and my wife also has her “My Documents” in a second share.
The overall size of everything is ridiculusly small compared to the drive (like 100GB of stuff). However there is lots of stuff there I don’t want to loose. Right now the easiest way I have found to back up is just to copy and paste the the folders into another USB hoard drive. Actually that worked prettry well, but I will check out robocopy since that seems a bit more robust. I was mostly wondering is there was a more automated way to set backups, or even an online backup solution that worked with an NAS.
Yes, I have been thinking the same thing here- what’s the best way to back-up my two (2TB) MyBookLive drives?
I’m using one (2TB) MBL unit as dedicated back-up for my PC(s) data. The other 2TB unit is being used primarily as a media archive- ripped DVD, BD, and music files.
Should I use something like this?
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=290
And use say 4TB to 6TB in RAID?
Hmmm… Or attach a second NAS (I have one) to the network, download a CLI FTP client to the MBL and schedule files to be FTPed to the other NAS as a background job…   Hmmm… Interesting little project. Then a back-up can be done direct NAS to NAS and not involve a desktop or laptop computer.
Hi guys,
Any luck on this? I plan to buy a second MBL and backup device-2-device using ssh and rcp, but I am worried that it is too slow.
Cheers,
Palle
When I RMAd my  MBL for non working LED,  WD sent me a replacement first (advanced RMA)  I tried RCP, FTP , SCP and finally  rsync but  all of them basically yielded 300kb/s transfer speed so my 500GB data took more than a week to  transfer.
Interesting thing about this was that in rsync’s verbose mode, I could see each file started as MB transfer speed and in few seconds, it slowed down to 300kb or less.
Note that if I run two rsync sessions, Â both sessions yeilded to 300kb/s. Â In another word, I dont think bandwidth was an issue.
 There maybe a supervisor process to control/regulate the speed of individual  file transfer but I did not have expertise to look into this in detail.
Stay tuned. We should have a solution for this problem in the next few months 
I do have a LaCIE network drive and I sort of do a semi-automated back-up by using an FTP client on the MBL to connect to the LaCIE FTP server and copy stuff across without involving a computer as such. Direct NAS-to-NAS.
This would be good, but whatever solution is designed by WDC, please not make it some sort of custom back-up file format. It is possible now to use an FTP client and some pretty complicated bash script to back-up parts of the NAS to another FTP server. That FTP server. (Specifically “FTP server”!) This would be cool.
At the moment the MyBook Live I have got is working quite well. It’s a 1TB drive but the issue is keeping a backup and the fact that the slightest thing that goes wrong with it wil “trap” my data on that disc.
Once the drive is out of warranty then opening the case and connecting the drive to another computer to retrieve data would be that much of a problem but I’m guessing while under warranty Wester Digital’s solution will always result in the drive being formatted outright and everything restored to factory specifications?
Data backed up to the target drive will be uncompressed and available to browse (assuming it is on a public share).
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