My Book World Edition II - alternative use?

Having switched to Windows 10 and discovering that Memeo Anywhere Backup won’t run on it, this seems like an opportune time to make some changes in my storage strategy.

Given that my primary hard drive is almost full, I’d like to re-task the MBWE to serve as primary storage for my photos thus freeing up a lot of space on the primary drive. I presume that the RAID capabilities of the MBWE will continue to provide automatic backup for those files.

While the option exists to pay ~$50 for the pro version of Memeo, which I believe will work on W10, I think it is better to put that money towards a new WD My Book or My Cloud to back up the primary drive (and maybe a laptop or two).

Is anyone aware of any limitations to the MBWE that would preclude using it as a NAS device as described above?

Thanks,
Wayne

Hi, welcome to the community.

As long as you are able to access the MBWE using the explorer you should be fine. Keep in mind that the RAID 1 will only keep a backup of the information in the event that a drive fails, but other than that you are good.

Thanks lluna,
I’m trying to think of every possible dumb question to ask before I push that irrevocable delete button.

No problem accessing the drive, opening or changing a file, so deletion must be just as easy as it usually is. From what little I know of RAID 1, it mirrors the drive so my deletion action will also occur on the backup drive(?)

If the first drive fails, how do I recover the data from the backup disc? I can’t see that one in Explorer. In fact, how do I verify that it is indeed doing a proper job of mirroring this drive?

I may as well uninstall MEMEO as it is of no further use(?)

If the first drive fails, how do I recover the data from the backup disc? I can’t see that one in Explorer.

I thought that I could use WD Smartware to backup my C drive but since it is already doing that for another hard drive I’d have to buy the pro version to get it to do more than one drive. Or buy yet another hard drive, which isn’t an unappealing idea.

The only real downside I can see to this plan is that I like to take my backup drives offsite for better security and I’d be giving up physical separation of the units if I carry on with RAID 1.

Hi, @KeepOnLearning,

To answer your questions:

You are right, if you delete something from the My Book World, it will get deleted from both drives.

You need to figure out which of the drives failed and replace it with the same kind of internal drives and the enclosure should rebuild the RAID from the good working drive without any intervention from the user.

You can’t manually verify if its doing the job, as you will not have direct access to the drive, unless you pull it out of the enclosure, or use SSH to check on the second drive.

Yes.

I would check with support, whether backing up with the WD Smartware to the My Book world is possible or not.

I’ve seen some users that they backup their NAS to USB drives and then save them in a different location, bank box, parents house, etc.

I in my case have a WD My Cloud which keeps a copy of the data that is inside of my computer on a daily basis, and a Windows Server with encryption which holds my weekly backups.

Thanks again lluna. You’ve been a big help. This is leading to more questions, but I’ll start a new thread. Have just discovered my original My Book came with WD Smartware Pro so I’ll have to search for it and try to get it operational.

No problem, if you think I can help, feel free to ask me