Hi, I have my MyCloud setup and working. But I decided to do a test. What if my EX2 enclosure fails but I still have good hard drives inside? So I took my hard drives out of the EX2 enclosure and connected them to my PC using a USB cable. My PC recognizes the device, but doesn’t recognize the format and wants to format the hard drive… That is unexpected surprise for me. How do I get the data off my hard drive if my enclosure fails? I did not encrypt the data. Thanks!
Hello test789,
The drives will not work in windows interface, if your device fails and it’s under warranty you can simply install the drives from old enclosure to the replaced one and you will be able access your data or you can try to connect the drives on a linux computer and try to access the data from the drive.
Thanks logan, I appreciate your response. So, if I connect the hard disk (not the enclosure) directly via USB to a linux machine, you’re saying I’ll be able to read the data?
Secondly, does NAS from other brands beside WD behave the same way as well, as in the hard disks won’t interface with Windows directly? Thanks again.
Hello test789,
From our end we have not tested connecting the drives through USB with Linux system, the recommendation provided to you is a work around.
Also, we have not tested using our drives with other brand NAS system. Using WD drives on a non WD NAS system first you would need to contact the NAS manufacturer about the compatibility of the WD drives with their NAS.
I just went through your “test” case in real-life and struggled through a solution. After a lot of investigation, as well as a trip to Best Buy to see about help (which they provided none…said they couldn’t get the data off), I found a solution. Spent $20 on a iDsonix hard drive reader and downloaded for FREE DiskInternals Linux Reader. Was able to plug in the hard-drive and access files without issue. This was after I also tried (and paid for) EaseUS software which looked promising, but ended up providing files that were useless (half to all of the visible picture was missing).
In the end, really frustrated that Seagate (previous NAS enclosure brand) and other manufacture sites provided no guidance to lead to this solution…it was only because of forums similar to this one that I was eventually able to come across piece meal solutions.
@mdesveaux, @dswv42 Thanks guys. I used to have ubuntu on a stick years ago. That solution seems fairly straightforward. Thanks again.
