My Book Factory Reset attack - Data Recovery Tools

WD Legacy Products My Book Live
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Will WD issue a data recovery tool?

has anyone successfully tried any data recovery tools?

I am thinking to shuck the drive from it’s case, connect to PC internal data/ power and try “EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro”

Fortunately my other three MyBook drives were not connected to the internet on 6/23 !

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I took the plunge and tried Easeus, I used my book as a backup, so virtually all my data is some where else, so not much to lose. There were a couple spreadsheets that took a long time to build that had the most recent version on the my book, so I wanted to get them back rather than rework a December version.

At any rate, I tore the case open, took the drive out, and hooked it up. There were a couple snags. I first used a sata to usb converter, but that kept dropping the connection after a couple hours, I then connected it directly into my machine (all my sata were used so I took the dvd one), oddly I couldn’t scan more than half the drive on my new acer machine, so I tried my 8 year old HP and that scanned the whole drive. I needed to start at the full drive level, not a partition.

At any rate, 410,000 files recovered. Probably most are files I previously deleted, that is the snag with data recovery. But the two spreadsheets I really wanted I got.

The easeus program puts names and dates on some of the files based on data it pulls from the file, so a bit of a help if you just need to get some data back.

I really liked the Mybook, it’s worked for close to 10 years, humming away next to my router, although WD has been screwing with the software used to access it remotely of late (I thought that was for security reasons - guess not!).

It is a shame the world tolerates these attacks over the internet. The response seems to be to blame the victim. If people were attacked on the street we wouldn’t tell them they should stay in their basements.

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Artic parrot. Are you saying that you lost data to the factory reset hack and were able to take the drive out and then use Easeus to pull files off the drive?

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yes, it was a little glitchy at first as my sata to usb converter kept dropping out, so i went the direct route. You have to make sure not to let windows format the drive if it asks. Also, on my newest pc i could not scan the full drive, but on my older (still windows 10) i recovered over 400,000 files. You, of course, recover stuff you deleted years ago too, so i ended up with 2 TB of files, even though there was less than 1 TB of files on the MyBook, most files lose the titles, but many have the author and sometime hints that Easeus pulls out of the file. It appeared that my JPG, PDF, and video files all recovered but these were all backed up so i didn’t bother recovering them.

Easeus (I don’t work for them) has a trial version, so i used that first, and when it had the two files i wanted, I decided to pay the subscription rather than waste a few days rebuilding the spreadsheet. My own stupidity, as almost everything on the drive was backed up except those two files which i worked on from multiple locations. I decided not to waste multiple weeks waiting for the WD solution, by opening my drive i may have forfeited the “reduced price offer” but hey, that may be months away too, I needed these files right away.