WD My Book Duo data forever lost if Drive Enclosure Dies!

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
16

Windows My Book Duo RAID1 is defective
This info is concerning a 16 TB Windows My Book Duo purchased from amazon on May 17th with the expectation of using the device in RAID1.
The backup strategy chosen was to purchase an additional hard disk of the exact same model as the stock drives, and rotate the two disks weekly.

What I found is the RAID1 functionality is not stable and should not be used
with any expectation of reducing data loss.

All Disk Drives referenced below are
WD80EFZX SATA 128MB Cache NASware 3.0
MODEL WD80EFZX-68UW8N0

Steps to reproduce

A. Stock Drives in RAID1 Fail if a drive is removed and rei-inserted
0. Use WD Drive Utilities Configuration to enable RAID1 configuration (wipes all data on both drives),

  1. Eject the My Book Duo using Windows Explorer
  2. Power off the My Book Duo.
  3. Remove Drive two from My Book Duo.
  4. Power on My Book Duo.
  5. Verify in WD Drive Utilities that the drive is offline
  6. Eject the My Book Duo using Windows Explorer
  7. Power off the My Book Duo.
  8. Reinstall Drive 2 in My Book Duo.
  9. Power on My Book Duo.
    EXPECTED RESULTS
    1. WD Drive Utilities shows the drives are online in RAID1
      FOUND RESULTS
    2. Drive configuration is unrecognized. The only option is to wipe the disks and reconfigure
    3. Drive configuration is recognized but requires a rebuild with no access for about 8 hours.

B. Replacing one of two mirrored disks with the exact same model number
results in an unrecognized configuration. This simulates a single-drive-failure in
RAID1 which should almost never result in data loss.
A. Stock Drives in RAID1 Fail if a drive is removed and rei-inserted
0. Use WD Drive Utilities Configuration to enable RAID1 configuration (wipes all data on both drives),

  1. Eject the My Book Duo using Windows Explorer
  2. Power off the My Book Duo.
  3. Replace Drive two from My Book Duo with exact same model MODEL WD80EFZX-68UW8N0.
  4. Power on My Book Duo.
    EXPECTED RESULTS
    1. WD Drive Utilities shows the new drive needs to be formatted and added to the existing RAID1
    2. Drive One is still valid and part of the RAID 1 config
      FOUND RESULTS
    3. Both drives on line.
    4. Drive configuration is unrecognized.
      The only option is to wipe the disks and reconfigure

Anyone familiar with RAID1 would never expect this behavior.
This unit does not support normal RAID1 recovery.
RAID1 should almost never result in data loss. In this case it always results in
catastrophic data loss.

Bottom Line:

  1. Never trust your backup solution until you’ve tried it with test data

Next Steps…stiil contemplating these…

  1. File a complaint to the Consumer Protection Agency so WD is forced to respond publicly
  2. Create a Public Service Alert video and try to get TV stations and youtube to promote it
    to draw attention to this defect before more people loose data
  3. Dissect the drive enclosure and attempt to recover and publish the AES key
  4. Try the drives directly on the motherboard or in an attached Drobo/Synology/etc enclosure
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