Good morning,
i’m gonna buying a
My Cloud EX2 Ultra Codice: WDBVBZ0000NCH Cod. Produttore: WDBVBZ0000NCH-EESN to be in right with new GDPO european law, and i ll have to encrypt data.
I will have RAID1 mirroring 2tb+2tb inside.
i’m afraid that if the MyCloud EX2 Ultra will die (before or after warranty) i will lose all my data because it’s encrypted and then i cannot mount Hard Drive into a LINUX pc to save data from NAS hard drive to another one.
Then i m asking you: if i encrypt data inside My Cloud EX2 Ultra, is there a software WD to decrypt data in case of hardware disaster? when/if this will happen, i could buy another one and try to mount old hard drives in it? but what about in 5-6years, when My Cloud EX2 Ultra will be no more available for selling?
Thanks a lot
Nino
My Cloud device allows to change hard drive from one enclosure to another in case of any error/issue in My Cloud device under RAID 1 configuration. You can rebuild RAID if there is issue is one of the disk and need to change only disk to recover data back from the mirrored drives. You can refer this KBA for more details:
my problem is what to do in 5 years when maybe MyCloud will not exist anymore. why doesnt WD create a software to decrypt his data, if hardware fails? of course after typing the Crypto Key! is there other ways to recover data from encrypted NAS? let’s suppose some years passed and/or i don’t want to use another WD nas enclosure… what to do?
thx again
You can recover the data by mounting it in a Linux box. The encryption is done with cryptsetup+luks and the filesystem is ext4, so as long as you are still able to remember the password and keep a backup of the key, you should be fine. However, based on my experience with my EX2, I should warn you that the OS does not utilize the chip’s hardware encryption accelerator, so the performance on the drive will slow down a lot.
Nino,
I hope I’m hot too late and you haven’t made a purchase yet.
I have been dealing with a MAJOR data loos on my crappy WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra.
This is a brand new (3-4 months) device that I bought to have backup and a better place to store my files.
This was purchased as my safety-net, my comfort data pillow, my no more worries device.
Instead the darn thing fails and causes 30+ years of business & personal data loss.
Their tech support, that hardly speaks english, is a joke. Giving me 3rd grade solutions (reboot, unplug, knock on wood, etc.) and not really there to help, more like avoid real answers and give you the run-around.
I personally find it beyond ridiculous that a company that’s been manufacturing Data Storage hardware for decades does not provide solutions for data loss/recovery while they have ALL the experience, knowledge and resources to do so.
The amount of users on this forum that complain about Data loss on WD products SPEAKS VOLUMES!
The fact that not only WD doesn’t offer data recovery, but recommend companies on their website makes you wonder if they also get “referral fees” and find it easier to make money while others do the work.
And this whole Hardware Encryption deal that stands in the way of solving data loss problems which you only learn about here (user forums) after you’ve had problems is another scam/sham/bam.
Shame on you Western Digital. On your poor dysfunctional products and worse customer support and problem solving capabilities!
Shame on me (and everyone else) if I ever purchase any of your products again.
Dear friend,
i know WD and a lot of other brands doesnt allow you to recover easily your-own-data if it’s encrypted.
i think WD is still one of the best brands for HDD and other products, but i still, and i will, ask to create tools to install (not only for linux, or explain instructions for not-unix-users like me) and recover encrypted data, if the owner has got the Password that he put in the begin in the NAS.
I think this should be done and the international LAW should defend customer, forcing, requiring to ALL brands (wd, qnap…) the software to recover it.
it is not admissible that you SHALL buy another NAS if the first fails. even because in 10 years there will not be the same stuff in production.
So, i still like WD (i always use Purple and Red for nas and cctv purpose) but i m also by the idea that they should be forced by the Law to create recovery software easy to use.
^=== well, not to be biased, but you clearly are not American 
So - - as with most things in life, caveat emptor applies.
I think you are correct that to count on the WD NAS box to be enduring and to be able to recover from a hardware failure 10-15 years from now is asking a bit much. Data recovery in the event of a BOX failure will likely be problematic even 2-3 years from now. Remember. . .these are low-end Consumer Grade NAS devices. This stuff is not enterprise level hardware. These products are AWESOME for what they are. I really enjoy my units. They are not, however, ultimate backup and storage devices good for. . .forever.
Fundamentally - - - -you don’t want THE ONLY COPY of all your data in one box. What happens if you have a house fire? What happens if you do something unwise and have ransomware problem on your NAS?
All critical data should be backed up on a device sitting in a different location. I copy everything to an external drive every once in a while. . . . .which is stored in a different place. (i.e. not in my house) and I keep very recent data with me on a small device like a USB key.
Next, you are going to ask for software that is “secure” from a Cybersecurity point of view. hehehe. I think you can be assured that WD NAS products don’t offer enterprise level security either. Great stuff at a good price. Not ultimate hardware/software by any stretch of the imagination.
^=== well, and i’m not sad. 
being cheap is not a reason to risk not being able to recover data.
Of course, i sometime backup data in another (usb) hard drive, even beacuse “nothing” could save NAS from ransomware. I just wrote this topic because i believed, or better i hoped, WD had software to simplify recovery of crypted data.
in the meantime, i looked for other producers and i realized that basically nobody built software to recover data easily from their encrypted NAS. From here, I hope one day some international laws oblige them to build.
The problem with encrypting these devices is that it adds yet ANOTHER point of failure. Yes, your house could burn down, ransomware etc. could attack, the hard drive(s) themselves could fail, but having the drives dependent on the enclosure they’re in is yet another risk of failure. If the housing fails with a non-encrypted drive, I can simply plug it in to one of my SATA-USB devices or pop it in a computer and read or copy the data, but if it’s dependent on the housing, that option is out. And for what? Why not give users the choice of encrypting or not? If it’s sensitive data, go ahead, and make sure you’ve got a backup, but if it’s not, and you want to risk fire/hard drive failure, at least you don’t have the NAS failure added in as a potential problem.
Same with external USB drives. When I buy a commercial one, I check to make absolutely sure it’s not housing dependent, like some of the WD drives are. There are enough potential problems without adding unneeded encryption or oddball formats to the mix. End-user choice, that’s the best option. I have a couple of single-drive MyClouds and love them for their usability, but I don’t trust them due to the encryption of data and non-recoverability problem. Was looking at a 2-drive model, but I think I’ll pass, since I don’t have the choice of putting in a drive that I could take out and pop into something else for easy recovery. USER CHOICE, think about it WD.
Is it possible to simply use thee NAS without encryption so I can put the drives in an external windows drive bay to access them?
