Wanted to clarify, My Book Duo has hardware encryption, My Cloud Mirror doesn't?

[HyperionX]

As topic title suggests, I just want to quickly clarify as I’m having trouble getting a direct answer.

It seems the hardware encryption found on the My Book Duo is a concern to some, because if the enclosure/board fails it is not possible to just take out the hard drive and recover the data.

Looking at the My Cloud Mirror, can the drives been taken out to recover data in the event of an enclosure/board failure? I don’t see any mention of encryption on the My Cloud Mirror.

I do not wish to purchase the My Book Duo for this reason as I am not comfortable with putting all my data there only to know it won’t be recoverable, and I do not wish to purchase another as a backup as it defeats the purpose of the RAID1 in the first place.

Thanks!

[Reed_Byers]

I was just creating an account here to comment on the My Book Duo Issue, when I saw this post.

I want WD to know, I was VERY interested in the My Book Duo, and was close to the final purchase on Amazon, when I learned about not being able to disable hardware encryption.

That is a complete deal breaker on a RAID1 (or any hard drive system), and I am STUNNED that WD would do this. (And not even make it clear up front that you couldn’t disable encryption, to boot!) I have already HAD a situation where a RAID1 enclosure failed, and the only recourse was pulling the drives and rescuing the data manually. I could never invest in a system that pointlessly barred one means of data recovery…

I hadn’t heard about My Cloud Mirror yet, and am interested to hear if that (or any non-NAS RAID product of yours) manages to avoid this fatal flaw. I’ll go back to surveying your competition while I wait…

[HyperionX]

Yeh I was close to buying My Book Duo too.

This was where I saw the Cloud Mirror reference about no encryption, but unfortunately the author nor the poster got back to the topic:

MY Book Duo - Hardware Encryption

Thanks Hamlet & Joe for your response. A possible firmware upgrade locking us out of data is very disconcerting. The whole point of buying an expensive RAID 1 enabled enclosure is to have an automatic mirror instead of going through the hassle of manually keeping a backup (which by its very nature of being manual is not reliable). Even at enterprise level the harddisk configured in RAID 1+ level are usually not separately backed up in real time (there is no need for many reasons UPS, bette…

Scroll down a bit to see the Cloud Mirror recommendation.

The only drawback is that it’s a network drive only it seems. While it’s not a massive deal breaker, my router is not in my room so it must be outside in the lounge area, but I prefer being able to switch it on/off whenever I want, and needing to leave my room.

Otherwise, I hope someone can confirm! Thanks in advance.