Hello,
There does not seem to be a topic here or [specific to this] in the User Guide/help systems. The closest I found was here:
http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/Migrating-to-MyCloud-can-I-use-old-MyBook-live-as-backup/m-p/668253/highlight/true#M5903
(In case this should be moved there).
It took me a bit of poking around to finally determine that neither product (WDMBL/WDMC) can back up directly to another similar WD device (in a mirroring/syncing/incremental backup capacity). I would have LOVED to just purchase a second MBL or WDMC and point the old one at the new one and say “go” and continually sync each other. Not only is this not an option (like it is with BuffaloNAS products, for instance), but you cannot even push automatic SafePoint backups to another WD device beyond the local network. So. this kind of kills the 321 backup rule (becasue I cannot maintain a WD device off-site without a manual sneakernet solution, or some SSH tunnel trickery).
Anyway, assuming that is all correct, I’m just checking on compatibility of Safepoint backups from/to/between WDBML and WDMC devices. A big reason I purchased a WDMC instead of going back to BuffaloNAS (which again, has a much easier fire-and-forget sync option between location-independent devices), was so that I’d not have to set up everything from scratch while tranisioning [upgrading] from my existing WDMBL to a new WDMC device.
So, I’ve just started creating a SafePoint to an external WD Ultra Passport drive in hopes that the WDMBL safepoint will seamlessly apply to my new WDMC device…
Nowhere does help or forum indicate that this will work (User Guide for MBL only states it works from MBL to MBL). But I’m really hoping this works and I don’t have to copy everything manually…
I haven’t seen any posts blowing up saying it doesn’t work, but that doesn’t seem to be endorsing that it does.
Similarly… since I’m going to keep my old MBL as a backup… I wonder, will a WDMC SafePoint be able to be applied to an older WDMBL device? (say, in the case my WDMC dies and I want to quickly be able to get back up and running on the older hardware).
Thanks for reading and sharing any pointers.
Thanks, Ichigo, for confirmation. I had followed & sifted through all of those answers before, and none specifically mention the compatibility. But, I am going to give it all a shot shortly when the safepoint completes! Cheers!
Whelp, after the safepoint restore completed (the safepoint file created by the old MBL, placed on a WD MyPassport external drive connected to the WDMC), it reported as having completed (and I received an e-mail from the device), however the dashboard had hung, as had the device, presumably. Blue light, but no connectivity. I waited a further day, trying on and off to connect in various ways (and even scanning the network in case it had arbitrarily picked up some other IP address), but eventually had to reset the device. (I had to power cycle it as the reset pin-hole was not doing the trick).
But, once it came back up, I had connectivity again. To the shares via windows networking at least… The Dashboard was responding, but reported 0kb available/free on both the WDMC and the external drive (scary). Removed the external drive and checked it (the safepoint is still there), and I have another copy of everything on my old MBL, so I am presently updating the firmware of the WDMC to see if that resolves the dashboard issue.
One note on using the SafePoint restore method for migrating from one device to the next. After the reboot, the new device (whether another MBL or WDMC) will assume the identity of the previous device (network name, IP address–everything).
This is not noted in any help anywhere, so it’s just a good thing to note/think about in case your older device is still running on your network (and they are maybe both set to static IP addresses–or rather, the SAME address). I anticipated this, and powered down the older device just in case, but could see how that would be an undocumented problem for some folks…
Hi Ichigo,
Apparently, taking a MBL SafePoint and applying it to a WDMC is not exactly compatible (and I have not tried the other way around). I suspect other folks will run into this at some point, and I wanted to circle back to this for their benefit.
Applying a MyBookLive SafePoint to a new WD MyCloud apparently overwrites some settings specific to the MyCloud with MyBook Live settings, causing the problems I have detailed here:
http://community.wd.com/t5/WD-My-Cloud/Problems-with-WDMC-after-restoring-MBL-SafePoint/td-p/731102
Fortunately, the fix is to do a System-Only Restore AFTER applying the MBL SafePoint.
So, while this process will “work” to transfer the data from an old MBL SafePoint to the new WDMC device, it isn’t a seamless process. As of now, you will have to go in and set up all the users and permissions yourself, manually, after the restore, which is more of a pain than I thought this would be.
But it is done, and seems to be working so far.
Keep in mind that if you do this and you still have a working old MBL device, you could run into an IP address (and Windows Networking name) conflict if you do not change the IP (and Windows Networking Name) of the older device prior to completing the SafePoint restore to the new device.
