Hi, confused new user of the WD Cloud Mirror!
How do I set the cloud to backup disc1 to disc2 - is it automatic? If so how can I see the contents of disc 2 to check it worked?
Thanks
John
If you’ve left it in its default shipped configuration (RAID 1) then yes, it’s automatic. Whenever you write something to the MCM it will automatically be written to both drives.
From normal network share view you don’t see the discs individually, it just presents a single view of what’s on both of them (as they’re identical) by the controller.
If you really must have confirmation, you can enable SSH access via the web dashboard and then use a suitable client (for example Putty for Windows) to connect to the MCM at the OS level. You can then navigate at the command line and view the discs themselves. But this requires some basic knowledge of Linux to be able to navigate around, and care as if something wrong is done you could (in extreme cases) lobotomise the device.
Darren,
Many thanks for taking the trouble to answer my question.
I read the manual but was confused about the internal backup which I presumed was the settigns to backup from disc1 to disc2 but it kept telling me it couldn’t copy to itself. I guess that that setting is if you connect usb drives.
I presume in the case of a failure I simply take out discd1 and put disc2 into the disc1 position and can then start restoring?
Is that basically it?
Thanks again
John
Not quite.
RAID 1 is all done by hardware and firmware - when you access the MCM you’ll just see a single drive, rather than the two physical ones that are actually in the enclosure. When you write to that drive, the RAID controller takes the request and actions it in parallel on both disks. So if you save, create or update a file, it automatically happens to the relevant file on both of the drives simultaneously. Both drives are automatically maintained as exact mirrors of one another by the hardware/firmware without any need for user intervention or triggering.
If one drive fails, then the controller will detect this and notify you (the relevant LED on the front of the case will turn red and you’ll get warnings on the MCM dashboard and on the WD software such as Quickview if you have that installed). All of your data will still be available, taken directly from the remaining drive.
RAID1 is designed to essentially allow for failure of one disk of the pair whilst maintaining data availability. What you would do in such a case is replace the failed disk with a new one and then rebuild the RAID array (via the MCM dashboard). That will then copy everything from the remaining drive onto the new one to create a matched pair again.
It’s useful for such drive failures, but of course doesn’t make everything completely bulletproof. If the controller itself fails, or if there is some physical damage to the whole unit (fire, flood, theft etc) that kills both drives then you can still be in trouble if you don’t have a physically separate back-up of really critical data.
For some background, do some web searches for RAID arrays (the MCM by default ships in a RAID 1 configuration). An example link from Wikipedia is below:
Darren
Thanks again for all your trouble which I found really useful. It’s much better to understand the principles which then makes the practicalities more understandable.
If I understand it correctly, apart from setting up what it backs up and how often I can forget it until a light shows up and then I might need simply to replace a faulty drive with an (preferable) identical one.
John
You don’t even have to do that. There’s nothing to set up, it happens automatically whenever a file is created or modified. Just leave it as it is by default and you’ll be fine.
