UPDATED: Replaced references to “Live Duo” with just plain “Duo”. I’m interested in the DAS solution.
I’m looking for a solid RAID-1 USB3 DAS solution, so naturally I’m investigating the WD My Book Duo. My main concern is ensuring the recoverability of my stored data, whether a single drive or the enclosure itself fail. I’ve been unable to find a definitive answer to the question I pose in the subject. That is, if I remove one of the NTFS RAID-1 disks from the My Book Duo enclosure and connect it to a Windows 7 PC, will I be able to mount the partition and read the disk contents, assuming the disk is “healthy” and encryption is not being used?
I’ve heard some reasons why this might not work:
The My Book Duo may use a proprietary partition format that can’t be read by Windows.
The My Book Duo might routinely perform RAID-1 health operations/checks that may leave the array (or each disk) in an inconsistent state for much of the time.
If you’ve successfully removed an NTFS-formatted RAID-1 disk from the My Book Duo and recovered data from it directtly from a Windows PC, I’d be interested in hearing about it. Or if I can get an “official” yes or no response to this question, that’d be great too! Thank you very much for your time.
I may be coprrected here, but I’ve not heard of a NTFS formatted RAID-1 on a MBLD (I have one of these) and the MBLD does not have a USB3 port. Only USB2.
Also, the operating system actually resides on the drives? If you replace both drives at the same time I don’t beleive the MBLD will will start if the operating system partition is not present. you’ll need to follow a debricking procedure documented on this forum.
I believe the RAID-1 is formatted ext-4 within the MBLD. I guess it is possible to retrieve data. I’m sure you’ll find a guide somewhere in this forum on how to do this.
Ah, thanks Myron. This is just a case where I’ve confused myself with the brand/model names, given how similar they are. My question was intended to pertain only to the latest /newest WD My Book direct attached storage solution, which I believe is actually called the My Book Duo (not the Live Duo), which goes up to 12 TB capacity. It has USB3 ports for disk expansion and for connecting it as an external USB storage device, and (according to WD) comes preformatted with NTFS RAID-0. I’m looking more at the use case of NTFS with RAID-1. I’ll correct my original post.
